


Got Me Now (And I Can't Say No)

by Daiako (Achrya)



Series: Kinktober 2017 [10]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural (TV) Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Death, Emotional Constipation, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Injury, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Fili/others, Minor Kíli/Tauriel, Sexual Tension, Sibling Incest, Unresolved Emotional Tension, all kinds of issues, sad masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-01-17 05:00:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12357987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Achrya/pseuds/Daiako
Summary: “You know, saving people, hunting things. The family business.” Kili left his uncle, brother, and all the things that go bump in the night behind him. Or so he thought, he wakes up to Fili in his apartment. Thorin’s missing and Fili wants his brother's help in finding him.Kinktober, prompts are ghost hunter/paranormal, masturbation





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All aboard the dysfunctional relationship train. 
> 
> Don't even talk to me about how far past the 2k words it's supposed to be this is.

He doesn't remember what woke him up, only that something did. He stumbles down the hallway, bare feet silent against the soft carpet. Or maybe it's that he can't hear anything over the strange noises coming from his brothers room. The door is open and lights were flickering all along the wall, jumping and twisting.

The hallway is warm.

Kili is crying. He does that a lot, because he's small and that’s what babies do, and sometimes Fili can get him to stop before anyone else wakes up by holding his hand through the bars of his crib. He needs to-

Uncle Frerin comes out of the room, wobbling on his feet. His eyes are big in his face, too big, and there's a look on it that Fili has never seen before. (Fear, he would figure out years later, when he was old enough to process all the details he couldn't at six. It was fear on his usually smiling uncle's face, harsh, overwhelming, almost paralyzing fear.) Kili is in his uncle’s arms, wailing so loudly it makes Fili’s ears hurt. He's going to wake Amad if he keeps crying like that. Fili steps closer and Frerin looks down at him.

Fili blinks and Kili in in his arms and Frerin is pushing him away, towards the stairs. “Go outside Fili, now! Don't look back.” Frerin starts to turn, to go back into the nursery and Fili steps after him, doesn't understand why he needs to go outside at night, but his uncle whips around and shouts. “Now! You have to keep Kili safe, no matter what! GO!”

Fili goes, feet pounding against the carpet, the wood of the stairs, across the slick front hallway and out the front door.

He doesn’t look back, not even once, and that’s a thing, a strange haunting echo of regret, that will follow him. But for now, here, in this moment, he’s six and doesn’t know.

He stands in the front yard, close to the sidewalk and as far away from the house as he’s allowed to go without a grown up, Kili cradled close, and watches blankly as fire dances inside the nursery. The window blows out, glass falls down like rain, and the air is hot around him. He holds Kili closer, arm curved around his baby brothers head. He rocks him and kisses the top of his head, rubbing his back like Amad does when Kili won't sleep at night.

“Shhh, it's okay Kee, everything is okay.” He doesn't think about the fire or the noise, the horrible crackling and groaning as the roof begins to buckle and collapse. He doesn’t see it all come down, ash and embers launched into the sky. Kili is his whole focus, the only thing that matters.

Uncle Thorin comes, car screeching as it tears up the gravel drive. He jumps out and runs to the house but everything is fire now, he can't get close. He stands there, on the walkway, staring up at the house, arms at his side. (Years later Fili would be able to close his eyes, replay the scene of the night forever engraved in his mind, and know that his uncle was crying, helpless as their home, and family, burned.)

His arms hurt and Kili is heavy now but Fili doesn't let him go, doesn't even move until the fire trucks are there, loud sirens making Kili scream again, lights flashing. There's a woman in a uniform, faceless in the memory, who tries to take Kili but Fili won't allow it. He turns away, shaking his head, shouting ‘no’ at the top of his lungs and backing away. The woman says something but her voice is the hiss of steam made by hoses trying to beat back the flames. He shakes his head again. Kili wails, jostled and upset as Fili clutches him tighter and tighter.

“Uncle Frerin said keep Kili safe. I have to keep him safe.”

Thorin appears, pale and red eyed, slides between them and the woman, puts his hands on Fili’s shoulders, and looks down at him. “You did good Fili.”

He’d done good.

“Hold onto Kili, okay? Don't let him go and-" Thorin says something else but Fili can never remember that part. All that sticks is ‘don't let him go’.

 

\---

There were a lot of things Kili Durin was prepared to deal with on any given day. Professors who couldn’t teach their way out of a paper bag, other students in his class who were frazzled nearly to the point of insanity, potential fistfights in the line at Starbucks, and jerk off customers during his shift at work to say the least of it.

That was all normal and typical in his very normal and typical life. Nothing out of the ordinary happened and that was how he liked it.

So naturally something he wasn’t prepared for happened.

It was a creak and a thump that woke him up. For a long moment he laid there, staring at the wall, trying to shake off the last vestiges of his dream, _That Dream_ , and pull himself together. This wasn’t the time to freak out about it (it had been more mild than it usually was, no strange man with chalk white skin or a darkhaired woman bleeding out above him, and he could deal with mild) or wonder, for the hundredth time, how he could so clearly remember flames, shattered glass, and warm arms curled around him, keeping him safe and refusing to let go. He liked to think it was his subconscious piecing together what he knew of the story, and adding an unfortunate ‘you have an unhealthy attachment to your brother, maybe it’s time to look at that’ element, but at the same time it felt too real.

It had always felt too real.  

It took longer than it should have to push it away. Once upon a time he would have been awake instantly, reflexes honed to be ready to confront anything before his eyes were even open, but he’d had to get out of that habit. He’d had to learn to be slower, less careful, to not jump at shadows and reach for a weapon because most people didn’t grow up with combat training or with crossbows and swords at hand.

Tauriel shifted on the bed next to him, mumbling in her sleep. He breathed out, breathed in, then slipped from the bed, body tense and at alert. He avoided the floorboards he knew made noise, stepped over Legolas’ boots left in the hallway, and kept his eyes trained for the doorway ahead. If someone was in the apartment, and the open hallway window that was never open because it lead to the fire escape told him there was, they’d be in the front. Legolas’ door was shut tight and the bathrooms could only be gotten to through the bedrooms.

It had to be the front of the apartment.

As if confirming his thoughts a shadow darted past the doorway, moving from the living room to the kitchen. Whoever it was didn’t seem inclined to be all that quiet, the muffled sound of shoes on barewood seeming far too loud to Kili’s ears, but then a person didn’t have to be if they were sure everyone was asleep. Or had a weapon that would give them the upper hand in a confrontation.

He pressed his body against the wall and edged along, holding his breath the entire time. He peaked around the corner of the doorway, saw a shorter, broader form facing away, and threw himself into the room. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t hold back, went at them like he’d been trained to do, and couldn’t make his body forget. He gripped a wrist, tried to yank back the arm it went with while forcing the body forward towards the wall. The person (man) pivoted, turned, swung out with the other arm. Kili blocked it but the man was already using his momentum to force him away, slipping out of his grip. Kili stumbled back, feet catching the edge of a throw rug he’d never liked anyway, not that anyone had asked or took his decorating preferences seriously (you suggest one beaded curtain to separate the kitchen from the dining room and suddenly you’re blacklisted from Ikea.). He stayed on his feet but it took precious seconds to right himself, and the man was after him, caught him with hard push to the chest, feinted a punch from the right only to get him with a fist to the temple from the left. Kili’s head whipped to the side and his ears rung from the force of the blow but he stayed as steady as he could, dodging another blow, returning with his, duck, step back, avoid, kick out-

Wait.

This was-

A hand wrapped around his wrist and yanked him forward and then the man was back in his space, grabbing his shoulder and sweeping his feet out from under him in one fluid motion. Kili went down hard enough to make his teeth rattle and vision blur. A knee landed on his stomach, enough weight behind it to force all the air out of him, and a hand clamped down around his throat, squeezing once, warningly.

“Kili, relax!”

He blinked once, the dark blur in front of him clearing up. Even if it hadn’t he’d know that voice anywhere, no matter how long it’d been since he heard it. “Fili?”

He’d know that laughter, low and rumbling, and that infuriating smirk, top lip pulled back on one side to expose too many teeth, anywhere too. “Hey.”

“What the fuck?” Kili breathed out, letting himself go limp as the tension rushed out of him all at once. “Why didn’t you say something?”

Fili shrugged. “Not my fault you’ve been away so long you can’t recognize your own brother. Or keep from getting your ass kicked. You’re out of practice.”

It took a push and a shift, Kili hooking his leg around Fili then leveraging himself up, to flip them over and pin his brother beneath him. He sat over Fili’s hips, his arm tight across the other’s throat, and lifted an eyebrow. Fili grinned, eyebrows wiggling.

Kili darted to his feet, scowling. He frowned harder when Fili laughed again and a familiar thrill raced up his spine. He swallowed hard then thrust a hand out to help his brother get to his feet.

“Look, I don’t know what you’re doing here, or how you found me, but-”

The lights came on, a shock of brightness that had Kili wincing and reaching up to cover his eyes. “Kili?”

He turned towards the hallway, torn between irritation and amusement at the sight of Legolas and Tauriel, one clutching a bat and the other a golf club, seemingly poised to fight. Or had been, at least; now they were looking increasingly confused as they looked between him, Fili, and their clasped hands.

Tauriel blinked at them. “We heard fighting.”

Kili pulled his hand free hastily. “Oh. Hey. Right. This is Fili, my brother. Fili, this is Legolas and Tauriel, my girlfriend.”

He felt Fili stiffen at his side. He didn’t let himself look at his brother’s expression, though he could imagine it well enough; bewildered and, perhaps, a little wounded. Or maybe not.

Maybe things changed.   

There were differences he could see at a glance; Fili’s hair was longer than it had been when Kili left _They’d shaved half his head, left his scalp exposed like the pale underside of a fish_ , _and jagged dark stitches curled over the surface. He’d never seen his brother without hair before, never seen him look so small and thin. He felt sick._  blond curls gone straight with the weight of the length, held back in a bun, and he’d grown a bit of a beard and mustache. There were new scars, one running from the corner of his right eye to his ear and another cutting through his top lip.

But he was also still Fili, gaze attentive, fingers twitching at his side like he was ready to reach for something. Thorin’s old worn leather jacket hung over a unzipped sweatshirt, over a plaid shirt, over a dark henley, over what was probably a ridiculous tight t-shirt, scuffed up boots, and jeans. The familiar chain with the anvil and stars charm hung around his neck, and the braided leather bracelet was snug around his wrist. He knew this man like he knew his own hand  _Kili wrapped a hand around his cock and pressed his forehead against the chilly shower tiles, eyes squeezed shut, sighed his brothers name, and hated himself for it. He pumped himself hard and fast, the edge of discomfort and pain cutting through him and going straight to his dick.  He thought about rough, raised patches on fingertips dragging over his bottom lip and  darted his tongue over the spot, could almost taste salty skin on his tongue. He thought about the rasp of stubble against his cheek and neck, on his chest and stomach, against his thighs, and shuddered as he came apart._ and wow, that was an unfortunate turn of phrase.

“Girlfriend?” Fili asked.

“You have a brother?” Tauriel asked back, head cocked to the side. She started to smile then stopped, lips frozen halfway, and her eyes narrowed. “Your brother broke into our apartment?”

Fili snorted then, pushing Kili aside, stepped forward. He was all smiles, just as charming as he ever was, as he offered a hand to each of them in turn. “Fili Durin. Sorry about that, didn’t know anyone else was living here or else I would have used the door.” That was a lie. At best he would have been quieter and come to collect Kili before roaming the apartment. “You know, since Kili doesn’t call or write.”

She looked past Fili to shoot Kili a look that promised a lot of talking later but shook his brother’s hand anyway and wasn’t it just like her to take a break in and sounds of a fight in stride like that? She’d tolerated all of his oddities, numerous and disturbing as they could be, and it seemed a surprise brother was just another of those things. It was a surreal moment, the two of them together, her taller, willowy, in shorts and a t-shirt vs all those layers, pale hand clean and fingers delicate in the grasp of Fili’s tan one, dark under the nails with, probably, oil from the car, fingers knobby and curved from frequent breaks.

But they smiled the same, cautious and careful with an edge around the corners, toothy and sharp, eyes giving away nothing of what was going on beneath the surface.

“Nice to meet you Fili.”

Legolas looked far more suspicious, staring at Fili’s offered hand before leaning back to prop himself up against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. “Kili’s never mentioned you.”

Fili’s smile didn’t falter as he turned back to face Kili. “He wouldn’t.”

Two words that carried enough weight to crush. Kili looked down at his bare feet, shoulders hunching inwards, feeling it like a physical presence pressing down on him. It had been nearly over three years since they’d last seen each other and Kili had done his utmost best to not think of, let alone speak about, his brother. At first it had been the only way to keep himself from packing up and running back, Fili’s absence an ever present itch under his skin, and then it had been what he’d needed to embrace this new life.

No shadows that might jump at him, no guns on the bedside table and knives under the pillow, no spell books crammed into the bookcase, no uncle and unreachable standards, and most of all no brother. No best friend. No Fili.

“Well, it was nice meeting you but if you don’t mind I’m going to borrow my brother for a minute, family stuff, you know how that is.” Fili’s hand grasped his shoulder, tried to guide him away from the others.

Out of the corner of his eye Kili saw Legolas make an abortive motion forward, intent to stop Fili all over his face. Tauriel moved to, mouth flattening into a line and bat lifting up just a touch. Kili planted his feet, shaking his head to clear the jumble of thoughts for it. No, he wasn’t about to get in into ‘family stuff’ with Fili, not now or ever again. He wasn’t going to let his old life overtake the new one.

He stepped away from Fili to stand next to Legolas and Tauriel. “No. Anything you have to say you can say in front of them.”

He knew Fili couldn’t do that, wouldn't dare lay it all out in front of normal people, and he knew Fili would know what he was trying to do. It was a silent refusal to get involved, and a show of just where he stood now. His brother jerked in surprise, brows knitting together, then rocked back on his heels, hands finding their way into the pockets of his jacket.

“Okay.” Wait, what? “Uncle hasn’t been home in a few days.”

Kili ignored Tauriel’s soft “You have an uncle too?” in favor of rolling his eyes. “So? He does that all the time, he’ll pop back up in a few days.”

He bit back something unkind about Fili checking out the bars wherever they’d been staying. It wasn’t fair and Thorin deserved more than that from him. Their uncle wasn’t a bad person. Kili couldn’t even say he’d been a bad parent, in so far as he’d been a parent (Thorin would be the first to admit he’d left most of the raising of Kili to Fili, but it was hard to say that was a bad thing, considering) but he’d been...well. Thorin.

Demanding. Obsessed. Harsh. Uncompromising. He’d wanted everything from them, tears, sweat, blood, their _lives,_ total dedication to his mad quest. Fili had been willing to give it, had stood firm as Thorin’s heir, and Kili hadn’t. He’d thought he was once, had followed in the footsteps of his uncle and brother without question, finding a niche for himself, and he’d been sure they were invincible. He’d wanted nothing more than to be at his brother’s side, lived and died by Fili’s praise and smile, and a few years ago he hadn’t thought there was anything to change that.

And maybe their uncle thought emotional trauma was best handled by hitting things or drinking but Kili was not, at this stage, completely convinced he wasn’t right.

Fili looked skyward in what Kili knew was his ‘please, grant me the strength to not strangle him in public’ face. “Thorin is on a hunting trip, without me, and he hasn’t checked in, in a few weeks. No calls, no text.”

Kili’s stomach dropped.

\---

_It happened fast. One minute Fili was there, shotgun cocked and leveled, and the next he was gone with a creaking of wood, a thud, and a shout that cut off far too abruptly. The spirit, a kid who’d died terribly because they always died terribly and they were always too young and too angry and it wasn’t fair, stood in front of the hole in the railing that Fili had just gone sailing through. It’s body, translucent and devoid of color, flickered like tv static._

_Kili was frozen in terror, his own gun hanging from numb fingers. They were three floors up and there was nothing below them but hard floor. There was no sound, no curses or even noises of pain-there was nothing. He took a step forward, heart pounding against his ribcage (_ FiliFiliFiliFili _it thudded) and mouth dry. Why wasn’t Fili saying something?_

_The spirit turned, focusing the big empty black sockets that were once its eyes on him. Kili stared back, mouth open but no sound coming out. It threw a hand out and a force hit Kili hard, threw him back against the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. The same force kept him pinned there, feet dangling just above the ground. The gun dropped and skidded away, useless to him now. The ghost flickered, vanished, came back in front of him, head twisting to the side at an angle that no human could manage. It’s mouth opened, black and yawning and a low gurgling moan came free along with a rush of foul smelling water._

_A sharp pain stabbed into his chest and a wet, warm gush of liquid spread over his skin, soaking through his shirt scarily fast. Kili gritted his teeth against it, eyes sliding back to the destroyed railing. Fili, he had to get to Fili, he had to-_

_Fire. It came to life on the spirit’s shoulder first, jumping up with a quiet_ fwoom _, and spread like...well, like fire. The ghost jerked back in flickers, small face contorted in pain, and howled. The force keeping Kili in place vanished just as suddenly as it had come. He hit the ground running, barely spared a glance for the burning spirit, and took the stairs two at a time. He nearly tripped a few times, slammed into a wall on the second floor landing and left an ugly smear of blood behind, but didn’t stop._

_Fili was on the ground, quiet and still, leg bent at an angle that couldn’t possibly be right. Kili’s knees shook and suddenly he was on the ground close enough to touch his brother and afraid to do it, wheezing for air. Blood coated his tongue, dotted the floor in front of his face when he breathed._

_Fili didn’t move._

_The world went dark around the edges._

_Fili didn’t move._

_He knew, as Thorin came bursting into the house with Dwalin close behind, both of them smelling of smoke, that this was it. He was done._

_He couldn’t do this anymore._

\---

“It doesn’t have to mean anything.” Kili said as he followed Fili down the stairs. “Remember that poltergeist in Huntersville? The Devil’s gate in Key West-”

Fili tossed a sharp smile over his shoulder. “I remember a lot of things about Key West.”

Kili ignored that for the sake of his sanity and mental wellbeing. “Thorin was missing then too. Have you even called Dwalin?”

“Tried, couldn’t get through. Swung by his place on the way here-” Kili wasn’t sure what was more unbelievable, that Fili considered Dwalin’s place in Washington to be on the way to Pennsylvania or that his brother had gone to Dwalin first. And, fine, he’d just suggested it but that was...different. “Wasn’t around.”   

“Well...Thorin is always missing. He used to leave us for days at a time which, I’ve learned, is actually illegal, but he always came back. He’s fine, he’s always fine.”

“It’s been three weeks. He never goes dark for this long; that’s something  _you’d_ do.” Fili hit the bottom step and turned around, eyes searching his face. “Are you coming with me or not Kee?”

Don’t do this to me, is what he wanted to shout. Don’t make me choose like this, not again!

“No.”

“No? Why the hell not?” Fili had the nerve to look surprised.

Kili wanted to hit him. “I’m done. No more hunting, not ever.”

Fili spun on his heel with a scoff, heading to the front door of the apartment building. “Don’t be dramatic. It wasn’t easy but it wasn’t that bad.”

“Yeah? Remember when I thought I saw an elf in the backyard and Thorin said it would be good crossbow practice? Or when I thought there was a monster in my closet? And he gave me a 45?”

Fili’s shoulders rose up dismissively. “What was he supposed to do?”

“I was 9, Fili. You’re supposed to tell kids ‘don’t be afraid of the dark’, not give them guns. You don’t...you don’t take them hunting and teach them to kill things.”

Fili shook his head. “Are you- you know what’s out there Kee. Thorin couldn’t afford to pretend there’s wasn’t bad shit out there. Amad and Frerin-”

“Don’t.” Kili scrubbed at his eyes to keep from plucking at the leather around his wrist. “I...it’s been years, Fili, and Thorin trying to find what killed them hasn’t gone anywhere. He raised us like warriors, combat training, quizzes on how to best kill monsters, and melting down scrap for bullets. You can’t think that’s what mom would have wanted for us.”

He knew right away he’d pushed too hard. Fili’s eyes clouded over and then he was gone, slamming through the front door and out into the frigid fall air. Kili scuffed his feet against the ground, so aware that he should just let Fili go that it ached in his chest (right underneath that misshapen bit of scar tissue that liked to twinge when it snowed and always brought nightmares with it.) He followed, pulling his sweatshirt tighter around him as he did. He bounded down the stairs, eyes lingering on the dark muscle car parked in front.

“He left the car?” Thorin loved that stupid thing, maybe more than he loved them (but probably not. Probably.) He called Erebor, worked on it all the time, and kept it pristine. When Kili had asked about the name his uncle had looked down at him but his gaze had been far away. _‘It’s home.’_

Kili hadn’t realized how messed up a concept that was until years later, or that Erebor was the town they’d been born and lived in until the fire.  

“Yeah.” Fili touched the hood like someone else might touch a cross. “What’re you gonna do Kili? Just stay here, with this normal life, pretending you don’t know what you know.”

“Safe. It’s safe.” Kili tried to stress the word, tried to make his brother understand what he had here, what he’d needed, what he wanted to keep. What he’d known his brother would never want (but he'd hoped, he'd always hoped) when he’d packed up and left.

“That’s what you ran away for.” Kili said nothing because what was there to say to that, really? Fili’s curled lip said enough for both of them. The moment passed, unacknowledged because that's what they were best at. “Thorin’s in trouble, if he’s not dead already. I can **feel** it. I can’t do this alone.”

“Yes, you can.” And they both knew it.

“Yeah,” Fili admitted, glancing down. “But I don’t want to. I need you for this.”  

Kili’s stupid, sick, traitorous heart skipped a beat. His hands curled into fists at his side and he tried, he tried so hard, to not let a warm glow chase away the logical part of his mind but just like he knew that Fili could do this alone he knew he was giving in.

“What was he hunting?”

Fili, to his credit, didn’t gloat. He just walked around to the back of the car and opened up the trunk. A glance to the left and the right to make sure the street was really empty and no neighbors were peeking and he was pulling up the false bottom, revealing an array of bladed weapons, charms, holy symbols, and things to make charms strapped to the lid, guns and bullets nestled into compartments on one half of the actual bottom, and all sorts of supplies on the others; large bags of rock salt, jars of brick dust, grave dirt, herbs, holy water. In the center was a milk crate full of files; Fili went straight for it, digging through them.

“Why didn’t you go with Thorin when he left?”

“I had my own hunt, a witch thing in New Orleans.” He held up a file, scowled, and tossed it to the side.

“Thorin let you go on a hunt without him?’

Now Fili was scowling at him. “I’m 26, uncle doesn’t _let_ me do anything.” Kili stared at him flatly. Fili made a face then let out a small sound of victory. “Ah, here it is. Thorin was checking out this two lane blacktop just outside of Smethport, Pennsylvania. A month ago this guy-” He handed over a printed out article to Kili, who took a moment to mourn the waste of paper before skimming it. Missing man, wife, two kids, no sign of him. “They sound his car but he’d vanished. Poof.”

“Maybe he ran off.”

“Here’s another one in April, January, December ‘16, 15, ‘09, 04, 2000-”

“I get it.” Kili grumbled, accepting the stack of papers. “How many?”

“Twelve, over twenty years. All men, married with kids, same five mile stretch of road. It’s been happening more often so Thorin went out to look into it. That was three weeks ago, hadn’t heard from him since which was already sketch.” Fili said as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and swiped it awake. “But then I got this voicemail two days ago.”

Kili’s eyebrows went up. “Thorin never leaves messages.” Their uncle prefered to just call back over and over until someone answered.

Thorin’s voice, tinny and distorted by a static filled crackle, filled the space between them. “Fili, something is starting to happen. I think.-.something serious.-.need.-.figure out what’s going on.” It went out, became mumbling that Kili couldn’t understand no matter how he strained then: “Be careful. We’re all in danger.”

Kili’s fingers twitched. “EVP*. Did you-”

“Run it through a goldwave, get rid of the hiss, and slow it down? You’re the one who's been out here, playing house, not me.” Fili tapped his phone. “I know my job.”

This recording was soft, whispery and if Kili hadn’t known what he was listening for he would have missed it. “I can never go home.”

Kili leaned back, letting Fili pull the compartment lid down and shut the trunk. He stared off at nothing, the stack of papers heavy in his hand. “Never go home.”

“You know,” Fili said, leaning heavily against the trunk. “Three years, I’ve never bothered you. Didn’t ask for anything. You wanted to be gone and I let you stay gone.”

And it killed me, Kili heard between the words and saw in the tense line of his brother’s shoulders. They’d never really been apart, save the odd hunting trip when Kili had to stay with Dwalin or Bilbo, and they hadn’t known how to be. Kili had never expected even a week to go by apart let alone three years.

He’d thought, absurdly, that Fili would follow him eventually.

“Give me five minutes to pack, but I have to be back by Monday.”  

“I’ll be sure to tell the spirit you have plans.”

“My med-school interview is Monday. I can’t miss it, not even for Thorin.”

Fili’s face did something complicated, emotion flashing by rapidly, before he nodded once, firmly. “I’ll get you back.”

Tauriel was waiting and, when he went straight to the bedroom, bypassing her and Legolas sitting on the couch, and began tossing things into a bag she didn’t say a word. He hurriedly lifted a loose floorboard and dropped knives into his bag; he’d just covered them with a t-shirt when she stepped in, arms crossed over her chest.

“You’re leaving? With your brother. Who broke into our apartment.” A pause and a sigh. “Is this about your uncle?” He nodded. “Your brother said he’s on a hunting trip? Do you think he’s hurt or…?”

He looked at her, the concern on her face making his chest tightening uncomfortably. “Probably not. I’m sure he’s just...out of cell range. And too caught up to think about how he’s driving Fili crazy. Just gonna go up, bring him back, and be back by Monday, no big deal.”

Lying came so easily.

“Be careful.” She stepped into his space, leaned in to kiss him and he...moved. Turned his head at the last second, let her lips brush his jaw, and cursed himself for it. He saw the flash of confusion on her face but she smothered it quickly. “Call. Don’t go missing.”

He nodded, smiling weakly. “I won’t. I’ll be back before you know it.”

It was a sudden impulse that made him reach up to tug his mother’s runestone charm from around his neck and press it into her hand. Her fingers curled around it with a reverence that left him breathless.  

What was he doing?

He left with that, tossing a goodbye to a sour faced Legolas on the way. Fili was in the car, fingers drumming on the steering wheel and right. Right.

He was chasing after his brother, dogging his footsteps, same as always.

\---

Smethport was about three hours away, making it about 4am when they pulled into a motel about 20 minutes out, along the freeway. It was plain, the same as any of a hundred motels Kili had slept in growing up. It was comforting in a strange way. They walked into the front office together, Fili sifting through different fake ID’s intently while Kili tried to pretend he didn’t see it.

Back to identity scams and stolen credit cards, joy.

“Oh! Shawn, you’re back.” The kid behind the counter, who really probably wasn’t too much younger than Kili, was tall with curly brown hair, big hazel eyes, and a five o’clock shadow. He was beaming at them, or rather at Fili, and a blush was rising over his cheeks. “It’s, um, nice to see you again.”

Fili smiled slowly and the attendant went from pink to bright, fiery red. “I said I’d be back.”

Kili groaned softly. “You didn’t.”

Fili’s positively filthy smile said he _absolutely_ had. The desk attendant looked at Kili, smile dimming slightly.

“And you brought a guest.”

“Gus, my brother.” Fili said dismissively. "Have you seen that man we talked about? The other Mr. Spencer?" 

"No." The attendant said, eyes on Kili again, more intent this time, and he could practically see the wheels turning in his head. The likeness between them was superficial at best but it was there and Kili knew the attendant saw it too. Fili glanced at Kili as well and hummed, completely unbothered.

It was the fastest, most tense, check-in of Kili’s life, the attendant shooting him looks every few seconds. He kept his mouth shut until they were walking back to the car to grab their bags.

“He’s going to spend all night trying to decide if you’re a liar or have a brother complex.”

“Your girlfriend seems nice.” Fili said. "When did you stop going for blondes?" 

Kili snatched his key from his brother’s hand and, deciding to forgo the bag for now, headed right for his room. He may or may not have slammed the door hard enough to rattle the windows.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I...can't decide if they were 'together' before, or just suffering from the knowledge that there's more and dealing with it poorly. We'll see. There's at least one more chapter to this, probably two, to come before Halloween.
> 
> *Electronic Voice Phenomenon


	2. Chapter 2

Kili was far from a stranger to motel rooms or the hard beds and stiff sheets that seemed to be standard; he barely spared his surroundings a second glance as he walked to one of the two beds in the room. It was a standard set up, door to the bathroom at the back, beds, a dresser with a tv places on top, a kitchen, and a table with two chairs, more or less what he was used to. The details changed a little from place to place but for the most part they were always the same. The majority of his life had been spent in and out of motel rooms like this with Thorin and Fili, cooking at tiny kitchenettes, cleaning weapons on wobbling tables, and sharing a bed with his brother well into his teenage years (Fili's early twenties)

It was as much like returning to a childhood home as anything else could be. The ugly wall paper, faded comforter, puke green carpet, and rockhard bed were comforting in a their way, like his bed in his apartment with its softness and smooth linens never was. He wouldn't go so far as to say he'd missed it or that it made him nostalgic or reflective, or something cheesy like that, but he also couldn't deny there was a kind of...charm to it.

More than there should have been considering he had a nice enough apartment with all the things he assumed people liked in said apartments waiting for him.

Kili found himself dozing off almost as soon as he was on the bed, boots and hoodie still on. He had fully intended to stay up until his brother came inside but the glowing green on the clock next to the bed told him thirty minutes slipped back between one blink and the next with no Fili and Kili had to admit defeat. He kicked off his boots and crawled under the blankets, resigned to being alone for the night. What exactly his brother was getting up to at roughly four am Kili didn’t know but he didn’t doubt Fili would find a way to occupy himself.

Maybe with that desk attendant.

He had, maybe, overreacted a little. True, Fili had been trying to get under his skin, maybe as an annoying older brother but maybe for the other reasons, but maybe Kili had been trying to get at him first. And, if he was being completely reasonable, it was a fact that Kili's interests had leaned towards a certain type and Tauriel was a departure. If it was someone other than Fili it might have been a normal, if not lightly teasing, question, but it _was_ Fili so it was toeing the line of things Kili had resolved to not deal with anymore. If he'd just rolled his eyes and kept his mouth shut about that desk attendant…

He ground his teeth together and, with another glance at the clock, rolled over onto his otherside. If he found himself glaring hatefully at the door then that was no one’s business by his own. Which was for the best since he knew how stupid he was being. He’d always known, _always_.

He was...he didn’t know what he was, for being annoyed. He was the one with a girlfriend and a whole life (a life that he’d wanted, that he’d left his family for), who was he to be irritated by what Fili did in his private life? It wasn’t right or fair or...but then he'd always been too damn sensitive when it came to Fili.

His brother had once told him he was spoiled (‘a fucking brat’ might have been the exact words used.) and there was some truth to it, depending on how one looked at it. He'd never had a lot, moving around like they did meant packing light and not getting attached but what he did have he held onto fiercely. Even when he didn't want something anymore, he’d fussed, pouted, and cried if anyone else tried to take that thing away. It had been a stack of old comics that Kili hadn't even liked but fought tooth and nail to keep Fili from giving away that had prompted the accusation of being spoiled and he'd known he was being ridiculous even then. Even though he hadn't really wanted them and the space in the car could go to other things, losing even those stupid comics had felt like the end of the world.

It was a theme that carried over to more areas of his life than Kili would have liked.

They’d grown up as the only companions they had, aside from Thorin, and so Fili had been something he was unable to share. They hadn't gone to school like other kids for most of their lives; Fili had at first, bouncing from school to school and learning not to bother making friends only to lose them, but by the time Kili was old enough Thorin had discovered distance learning, Fili was officially uninterested, and the rest was history. Kili hadn't even stepped into a real school building until he was in high school and Fili had stopped even attempting to care about graduating by then so, safe to say, they hadn't really had any other friends. Just each other, all their lives; Fili was the one constant in his life. Thorin came and went as he pleased, entrusting them to each other, towns flashed by defined only by their monsters, they went by different names each time and learned the names of hundreds, maybe thousands, of people then forgot them a week later. Nothing and no one stuck.

Nothing was really _real_ except each other.

Fili had looked after him, cooked, taken him places, put him to bed, helped him with his homework. Fili taught him how to shoot, make bullets, the proper pronunciation for rituals in various languages. They’d yelled, wrestled, thrown punches and kicks, sulked, glared, and snapped at each other then made up more times than he could count. Fili had held his hand, hugged him, held back his hair when he was sick, cleaned and bandaged injuries then let him collapse into his lap after hard hunts, running fingers through his hair and humming along to the radio until Kili could sleep. Fili had only ever argued with Thorin when it was on Kili’s behalf, had drawn their uncles anger and given up things for him, he had-

So they were more than friends and brothers because they had to be, because for over fifteen years (and even after) there just hadn't been anyone else. They’d had to fill in all the gaps that should have belonged to other people and it was just...Kili knew what it was. He’d known there was some hazy line between what was acceptable and what wasn’t and that they’d tumbled right over it at some point and then kept going because they didn’t know how else to be. How could they be anything else when they were all tangled up like that?  

Codependency.

He hadn’t even needed a ton of self-reflection or a bunch of google searches to the tune of ‘why am I the way I am’ to figure that out.

What he did need, he decided as he stared up at a water stain on the ceiling, was to figure out why he was even here. For Thorin, yes, but not really. Fili could handle this alone, he might had wanted Kili along but he didn’t need him. Yet here he was anyway. His life was good. He was close to med school, he had good friends, a terrible but tolerable job, and he had Tauriel. It was more than he’d thought he’d have when he’d packed how whole life into duffle bags and walked out. He hadn’t meant it to go like this, to sever the tangled mess between himself and Fili instead of straightening it out, hadn’t even meant to totally cut himself off from Thorin, but it wasn’t...it wasn’t bad.

He was happy. Really genuinely happy, until about four hours ago.

This had been a mistake.

 

\---

_The world was washed out, all color faded into shades of blue. There was the man, skin so pale it was near translucent and head bald, with tar-filled eyes in a face that was familiar but not really, standing in a darkened corner. He was smiling at him, lips moving around words that Kili couldn’t hear over the roar of fire. He jerked against invisible bonds, tried to make legs that he couldn’t feel moved, to open his mouth, to do anything._

_All he could do was turn his head and look up. Her, mouth open in a silent cry, belly cut open and bleeding, wreathed in blue flames that were spreading out and consuming everything. They licked the ceiling, spread down the walls, ate up the floor and all the familiar odds and ends. The world was shaking, falling apart and burning down before his eyes and he could do nothing. Kili was below her, too weak to move, inky blood dripping down his face. Smoke was thick in his lungs and the heat blistered his skin and she burned, hair catching and dropping away in clumps, skin blackening. Her face, the face he knew so well, contorted in pain and she screamed. Screamed for him, screamed his name and reached out with burning hands for him._

_Warm arms wrapped around, tugged him back, out, refused to let go even when strength returned and he tried to thrash and fight, to  and_

Kili woke up in darkness that he both knew and didn’t _know_ , a shout caught in his throat, and tried to sit upright only to meet resistance. He was being held, thick arms around him, and when he tried to move the hold just tightened.

His body relaxed before his brain could catch up. Panic and fear drained out of him, though the taste of smoke still coated his tongue.

“Fee?”

A hand smoothed over the top of his head, curled around the back of his neck; he closed his eyes and turned into the warmth behind him, hand darting out to grab onto the worn fabric of his brother’s shirt. There was warm pressure against his forehead and damp hair brushing against his face, sticking to his skin. “Yeah, it’s me.”

Fili didn’t say anything else but they were old pros at this, knew it all by heart. Fili shifted, dragged him with him until they were lying flat, Kili’s head pillowed on his chest. Kili focused on his brother, matched his slow even breathing, thought of nothing but the hand pressed against his skin and the dull thud of his brother’s heartbeat under his ear.

He didn’t sleep but that was to be expected. The sun rose, fighting the heavy curtains to light up the darkness of the room, and the clock marked the passage of time, but Kili didn’t attempt to move. Fili slept, he knew it when the hand on his neck went limp and dropped away, and Kili told himself he didn’t move because he didn’t want to wake him. It wasn’t because it was warm, because he appreciate the insulated feeling or because he was half sure this was another dream and that if he rolled away he’d be back in the burning room.

When Tauriel pulled him out of his nightmares she prodded him to talk about it and that was, in it’s own way, a good thing. He’d never done that before; Thorin didn’t do well with the nightmares at all, more likely to slip out then try to comfort, and Kili had never wanted to mention dreaming of fire to Fili. There were some things even a decade or two couldn’t wipe away and Kili had never wanted to be the cause of the hollow expression his brother wore when their mother was spoken about.

Besides, Durins didn’t talk about their shit.

They were an old hunter family, founded by someone the family tree only called ‘Durin I’, a blended legacy from all corners of the country, different cultures, myths, and styles mixed together. Hundreds of years of hunting, learning, _coping_ , and only three were left of the direct line, though there were some offshoots that had become their own ‘groups’ over time.

Durins did lots of things. They pushed it down, coped, hit and shot things, and sometimes drank if it came to that. They lived, bled, sacrificed, rose and fell, hunted, killed, died, built pyres for their dead and scattered the ashes to keep the bad things away. They endured. They always endured.  But they didn’t dwell, they didn’t take the bad things home, and they didn’t talk.

People like Tauriel talked. Doing so had made him edgy at first, afraid that he’d give away too much and she’d think his nightmares about monsters and ghosts meant he was too disturbed for her to waste her time on, but that had never happened. She just listened, was just there, and that had been good enough.

Until a month ago the nightmares had been rare occurrences, but then for seemingly no reason they’d come back worse than ever.

Maybe it was the universe letting him know he wasn’t as done as he’d like to be.

When he finally moved it was a matter of necessity, not want. He slipped out of Fili’s grasp as carefully as he could, pausing guiltily when his brother grumbled in discontent. A bleary blue eye cracked open and found him; Fili managed to communicate a mixture of worry and wariness with a single raised eyebrow and a flattening of his lips. He was asking a hundred things (Are you okay? What should I do? What do you need?) all at once and Kili felt each one like a stone on his shoulders.

“Sorry.” He said, not entirely sure what he was apologizing for. Everything. Not enough. Nothing at all. “I was thinking I’d shower then grab something to eat from that diner next door.”

Fili waved a hand vaguely before rolling so his back was to Kili. “Whatever. Tired. Go away, be quiet. ...don’t touch my car.”

“I wish you loved me as much as the car.” Slipped past his lips as naturally as anything else ever had and not nearly as sarcastic as he meant it to be. He sucked in a breath, mouth open to say something else, to make it a joke, but Fili snorted and waved him off again.

“Car’s my baby. You’re a jackass.”

Kili exhaled. And that was that. Back to normal. Normal ish. Normal enough.

He headed for the bathroom, grabbing his phone and duffle bag from it’s spot at the end of the bed. Fili must had brought it in the night before when he’d come in from...wherever it was he’d been.

He went through the usual morning activities, lingering under the scalding hot spray of the shower longer than was strictly needed but not eager to face the world just yet. It was the ringing of his phone that brought him out, slipping against the tile and scrambling to dry his hands as he did. His phone nearly met the floor, slipping between his still damp fingers, but he managed to juggle it up to his ear, swiping away his dripping hair as best he could as he did.

“Hello?” He might have, possibly, sounded just a little frantic.

There was a pause then quiet laughter. “Hey. Just wanted to call and see how you were doing. You seemed...tense? When you left.”

Kili sighed. Tense was an understatement, and much too nice considering he’d basically run out with a mystery burglar brother with a very half assed explanation. “Crashed for the night, going to head up to the cabin to check on our uncle soon I think, won’t take too long.”

Hopefully. Assuming that Fili had any idea of where to start looking for Thorin or ideas on what exactly was killing those men out here. If not...well, then it’d be more difficult all around. He didn’t know what the hell they were going to do if it took longer than the sixteen or hours he had to spare to wrap it all up. He had his interview but-

One thing at a time.

He wiped at the mirror, clearing the fog and revealing is reflection. He looked...tired. “It’s fine.”

Tauriel was quiet again but this time he could all but hear her thinking and choosing her words carefully. “Is it fine?”

Yes. Of course. Why wouldn’t it be? Don’t worry about it.

“No.” He looked at the door separating him from Fili. “I shouldn’t have come.”

She hummed, soft and soothing. “You don’t have to be there, if you don’t want. If it’s too much. You...I know you must have a good reason for never talking about your family.” ‘Well, there was the issue of being in love with my brother. And the monsters. Oh, and my uncle is a jerk obsessed with killing the thing that killed my mom’. Kili smiled at himself bitterly. Lots of very good reasons.  “But I think you’d regret it if you weren’t there and something was really wrong. Maybe it’s something you need to do.”   

His fingers clenched around his phone. “Tauriel-”

“And if your brother or this uncle do something to mess you up I’ll drive up there and beat their heads in.” She finished firmly; he could see her in his mind’s eye, jaw set, mouth turned down at the corners, eyes bright.

He laughed in spite of himself.

\---

Fili was up and staring at the coffee maker balefully when he left the bathroom. His brother glanced at him, eyed him from head to toe quickly then jerked his head towards the door.

“We’re heading to the other motel near here. We’ve got a lead on Thorin.” Fili paused, lips pursing, then added: “Bring your stuff.”

Kili gathered everything up quickly, old habits kicking in, and they were out the door in under five minutes, a half eaten granola bar hanging from his mouth.

“What kind of lead?” He asked once they were on the road.

Fili’s eyes cut over to him for a second before locking back onto the road. “Loni, the guy who was working the desk- don’t make that face, he was...helpful.”

Kili picked at a loose thread in his hoodie. That answered where Fili had been the night before; he’d already suspected but knowing for sure did nothing but made his stomach churn uncomfortably. “What did he help you with? ...how do you even know him?”

“I told you, I was in New Orleans, working a case? When I got done, and hadn’t heard from Thorin, I drove up to Dwalin’s to see if maybe he’d decided to get laid-” Kili, who knew for a fact Thorin was out of luck if he’d went to Dwalin for that, gagged. Fili made a noise of agreement. “But Dwalin wasn’t around so I headed here to make sure he wasn’t in jail, the hospital, the morgue...you know, the usual. I was at the hotel all of a night when I got that message and decided to come and find you.”

“And you managed to chat up, and sleep with I assume, the guy working the front desk in a single night.”

“And got him to agree to check and see if Thorin, or Mister Henry Spencer, was staying at any other motels around here. It was a good night.” Fili looked incredibly pleased with himself. “He found him, paid up for the whole month at one of the two other places nearby and, lucky for us, getting there means driving on that stretch of road those guys vanished on.”

Kili wasn’t so petty as to deny that it was a good break, and a good chance to scope out the ‘scene of the crime’. He even said as much, and thought he even managed to refrain from sounding sulky while doing so. Fili looked at him again but Kili ignored it in favor of fishing another granola bar out of the glove compartment. He was chewing it methodically as he watched the road roll by, nothing but snow, trees, and power lines as far as the eye could see, outside his window when Fili reached over and poked him in the shoulder. Hard.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Kili swatted his brother’s hand away, scowling. “Watch the road.”

“You look pissed off.” Fili said, continuing to not watch the road like an asshole.

“That’s just the face I make when you’re nearby.”

Fili laughed and Kili sunk low in his seat, hating the warm flutter in his chest. Fili laughed again and reached over to mess up his hair. Kili bit his lip and turned away, refusing to react as the warm hand slipped down to rest against the back of his neck, same as it had when they were in the bed. “See, that’s the face you make when I’m around.”

“I’m tired and hungry, okay?” Kili bit out, ducking away from Fili’s touch. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?” He could hear the grin in his brother’s voice.

“Saying stuff like that. Touching me.” The words burst out and Fili’s hand was snatched away almost instantly. Kili’s stomach flipped unhappily. “Can’t you just be my brother for a weekend?”

He saw Fili’s expression shutter from the corner of his eye, become completely unreadable to him and when had that even become a thing? He’d always been able to read Fili, known him inside and out, but now he could put up walls, shut him out with just a look. He could feel it, a gap opening up between them and pushing them further apart, feed by a denial and a flinty look. He didn’t like it but he also didn’t know what he could do or say about it.

Wasn’t was doing the same thing by telling Fili to back off?

So why did he feel like an asshole

Fili flicked the radio on and rock older than they were (maybe older than Thorin, who knew? Well, Fili probably knew) filled the air. Fili’s fingers hesitated then, casting another look at Kili, he turned it up until Kili could feel the vibrations in his teeth.

Loud music was Fili for ‘let’s just not talk about this’. Kili letting it happen was as much of an apology as he could allow himself. It didn’t do much to make his stomach calm down and it certainly didn’t wipe away the blankness from his brother’s face.

The gap grew.

He watched the snow drifts roll by, the outside nondescript and rolling together into one endless scene of white and gray. He might have drifted off, or maybe he just blanked out, because after what may have been five minutes or fifty Fili shook him back to awareness. He sat up, blinking owlishly, a question dying on his lips as he saw what laid ahead of them.

Ahead of them the road forked, to one side it continued on as it and to the other there was a simple two lane bridge stretched over a river, a bunch of what looked like splintered wood, painted bright ‘caution’ yellow, were strewn across it. Crime scene tape was stretching from one side to the other, flapping in the winter wind. To the side of the end they were rolling towards were three cop cars and a few cops. Out on the bridge were two other uniforms milling around a fourth car. It was a normal looking car, no broken windows or visible blood or anything else that indicated something had gone wrong as far as Kili could see. Aside from the fact it was on the side of the road surrounded by cops.

“What do you want to bet someone’s gone missing?” Fili was visibly excited, dull looking giving way to an almost playful grin as he eased them over to the shoulder of the road. He reached into the back once they were stopped and pulled a cigar box from somewhere. Kili watched as he flipped it open and began digging around, eyebrows jumping up at the sheer number of IDs and badges inside. He plucked one with ‘FBI’ and a very official looking seal, as well as Fili’s very serious face, on the front.

“Oh my god. Fili, I am not-”

“Oh come on,” Fili said as he finally settled on two leather cases with silver star shaped badges inside. “It’ll be fun! You were too young to do this part before but trust me, it’s great.”

Too young. Because he was 20, nearly 21, to Fili’s 26 and he’d been 17 when he left, and had looked it. He’d been coming off a growth spurt, tall, thin, and awkward in his body, with a perfectly smooth ‘baby face’. Not fit to play impersonator with Fili and Thorin, so he’d often be left in the motel while they went and interviewed people or scammed their way into places they shouldn’t have been.

Fili had always come back with stories to tell while Thorin looked on indulgently.

But he’d been too young, a sentiment Fili had been repeating since he was 15 to Fili’s 20 and things between them had-

_“You’re too young Kee.” Fili said, looking down at him (something he wouldn’t be able to do anymore in a few short months). “You don’t know what you’re saying.”_

_Kili scowled, anxiety and embarrassment giving way to anger. He’d thought he was ready for his brother to say anything, to reject him or leave or...but no. He hadn’t even considered that he’d be told he was too young. He took a step closer to his brother, Fili’s name on his lips, but stopped when the blond jumped back, eyes wide. Like he was afraid. Like he was afraid of Kili._

-changed.

That had been a weird year all around. Kili had, two months after than, been caught by Thorin and Fili going down on a guy in the impala. The ensuing fight had been bad enough that Kili had stitch together a gash above Fili's eyebrow while Thorin broke every speed law ever getting them out of town. They'd had to call in another hunter to finish up, something Thorin had never done before, because he didn't want Fili to be seen and arrested. 

Kili climbed out of the car and fell into step with his brother, pushing the errant memory away. This wasn’t the time; he wasn’t about to fuck up impersonating a law enforcement officer because he was busy reliving past mistakes. He didn’t care how great Fili thought this was, getting caught and going to jail was the exact opposite of what Kili found to be fun. The credit cards he could tolerate but this was a lot.

Fili strode towards the car, back straight and head up, looking like he absolutely belonged there. A few of the officers looked up but their eyes slid straight from Fili to him, as if his brother were invisible. Kili smiled what he hoped was anxiously and walked a little faster to stay at Fili’s side. A quick glance down into the rocky riverbed  as they stepped onto the bridge found even more officers down there, poking long poles in the water, unfrozen even with the cold, as they shouted back and forth.

“-totally clean. Freaky clean, like it’s brand new.” One of the cops, an older guy who was leaning into the car, was saying as they walked into ear shot. The second man looked up from his notebook, shaking his head as he frowned.

“This kid, he’s still dating your daughter isn’t he? How’s Amy taking it?”

The first man sighed; Kili could see how weary he looked even through the windshield. “She’s downtown, putting up missing person flyers with some friends. Baby’s with the wife.” The second man made a  sympathetic noise.

Fili cocked an eyebrow at Kili then stepped forward, clearing his throat. “You had another like this last month, didn’t you?”

He spoke with the same confidence he’d approached with. To Kili he was his scruffy brother, in jeans and a leather jacket older than he was; he was nothing like the uniformed and carefully groomed police. Yet they didn’t immediately jump on them and whip out the cuffs. Instead both men straightened up, faces irritated but not what Kili would call suspicious.

“And who are you?” Officer Two asked, stepped towards them.

“Federal marshals.” Fili said smoothly, flashing his badge. Quick, but not too quick, just long enough for the man to look at it and start to nod before closing the case and slipping it back into his coat.

“Are you two a little young for federal marshals?”

Kili trapped a groan behind the back of his teeth. Thirty seconds in and this was already falling apart.

Fili’s expression didn’t flicker. “Is that a compliment or are you suggesting we might not be good at our jobs because of how old we look to you?” The man blinked, taken aback, but Fili moved on with no hesitation. “You did have another one like this, correct? Our information isn’t wrong, is it?”

Another blink and then the man nodded, incling his head towards the car in what Fili seemed to take an invitation to get closer and start peering through the windows. Kili watched, struggling to hold back his disbelief.

 _“If you look like you think you belong almost everyone will go with it.”_ Thorin’s voice reminded him. _“No local guy wants to be the jackass who argued with the marshals or FBI or troopers and made his whole town look bad.”_

“About a mile up the road, that way.” The officer pointed back the way they’d just come. “And we’ve had others before.”

Fili hummed and, seeing his brother was more interested in the car than talking (typical) Kili stepped up. He even managed to keep his voice steady; he’d never actually done this but he’d acted it out with Fili enough. He hoped.

“This victim, you knew him?”

“Town like this, everyone knows everyone.” The officer rubbed at his eyes and he too looked tired. “For all it matters. The other victim, from a month ago, was from a town up. Knew him too, still can’t find a connection between them aside from being male and having kids. The ones before that were just passing through, same thing. Male, kids but we don’t even know if the second thing is deliberate.”

Kili nodded, turning that over in head head. It might be but, at the same time, attacking men in their thirties and above would mean kids were more likely than not. It could have been a coincidence. Thorin wouldn’t think so, he didn’t believe in coincidences, but Kili wasn’t so ready to rule it out.

Hadn’t all the victims been married before now? But this one was, supposedly, dating the other officer’s daughter, not married.

“What’s the theory?” Kili asked, mentally filing all of that away to look at closer later.

“Honestly?” The officer sighed. “Nothing. Serial murder, kidnapping ring, a bunch of guys who got tired of their lives and happened to vanish from the same spot. No idea.”

“Well,” Fili said as he sidled back into place at Kili’s side. “That is exactly the kind of crack police work I’d expect-”

Kili kicked his brother in the ankle, smiling tightly as he did. Wonderful, of all the things to pick up from their uncle a disdain for law enforcement (Or, rather, a lack of respect for anyone who wasn’t a hunter or hunter adjacent) and not nearly enough tact to hide it was just what Fili needed. His brother grimaced in pain but smoothed it into a pasted on smile of his own. The officer looked unimpressed.

Kili took that as a sign that it was time to go. “Thank you for your time.”

He turned to leave, trusting Fili to follow. They weren’t even off the bridge when Fili’s hand collided with the back of his head. Kili winced, hand going up to cradle his skull on reflex. It hadn’t actually hurt that much, Fili had pulled the blow, but he didn’t appreciate it.

“What did you do that for?”

Fili cut in front of him, forcing him to stop. Kili glanced around; this was not the place for an argument but when Fili was looking at him like he’d keyed the impala or something equally as unforgivable. “What did you kick me for?”

“Because you can’t talk to the cops like that Fili, that isn’t-”

“Like it matters, they’re idiots.” Fili sneered. It was almost scary how much he looked like Thorin. Kili was going to have to ask him to never do that again. “Those guys have no idea what’s happening here, none. We’re all alone on this-”

“Fili.” Kili said, gaze flickering up to the group of three, two of them in dark suits and windbreakers, walking towards them. The third was wearing the same tan uniform as the other officers on the bridge but with the addition of a wide brimmed hat and some stars on his uniform that suggested he might be in charge.  

“And if we’re going to find Thorin-”

“Fili!”

“Then we’re going to have to do it ourselves! What is-”

“Gentleman.” The lone woman among them said, tone flat. Fili’s eyes widened slightly then, smile back in place, he turned to face the group. “Can we help you with something?”

“No sir.” Fili said, sidestepping them. “We were just leaving. Mulder, Scully, loving the comeback.”

Kili shoved Fili as hard as he could once they were back at the car. “You’re an idiot.”

Fili shrugged. “You should be nicer Kee, if we go to prison you’re going to need me.”

Kili thought slamming the door on the car said everything that needed to be said about that.  

\---

Finding the girlfriend wasn’t hard. Downtown Smethport wasn’t exactly huge and there weren’t many women taping ‘Missing’ fliers to the poles and windows of businesses. She, and the friend she was with, seemed wary of them but once Fili spun a story about being her boyfriend’s cousins (after taking a subtle glance at the fliers to get the missing man’s name, Trevor) she was happy to tell them what she knew. Which wasn’t much. She’d been on the phone with him while he was driving home when he’d claimed something wasn’t right and hung up. He’d never called back and when she’d gone looking the next day she’d found his car and called her father, who’d brought the rest of the locals out to investigate. That’s when she’d taken her and Trevor’s daughter to stay with her mother and started making and handing out the fliers.

There wasn’t really anything of note there but when Fili pressed a little, saying that they didn’t believe Trevor and the other men going missing was ‘right’, the friend spoke up, cluing them in to a local legends. A woman, murdered out on the highway some decades ago, supposedly still out there haunting the place. Sightings, weird electrical occurrences, creepy noises, the whole nine yards. Supposedly any men who picked up hitchhikers out there disappeared forever.

It sounded like exactly what they needed to get to the bottom of things. It should have been a simple matter to hole up in a diner and search what they needed on the internet.

“I can’t find a fucking thing.” Fili declared, face screwed up in disgust. “I’ve googled woman murdered in Smethport, women murdered on highway, woman murdered on bridge, woman hitchhiker murder and ten variations of all of that. I’ve looked at the town’s records of murders going back fifty years, which was harder than it sounds because half of that is scanned in and turns to blurry nothing when I zoom in, and there’s nothing.”

Kili, popped his last bite of his waffle into his mouth then reached over the table and plucked Fili’s phone from his hand. Fili tried to snatch it back but Kili moved faster, turning to the side and holding it up out of his brother’s reach.

“Just let me do it.”

Fili tilted his head up to look at the phone, far enough above their heads that he wouldn’t be able to reach it without standing, then sat back in his seat, shaking his head. “That’s dirty Kee, real dirty. Do what you want, control freak.”

The irony as almost too much to believe. Kili lowed his arm and quickly unlocked Fili’s phone (it was Kili’s birthday. It had always been Kili’s birthday and it hurt in a way that wasn’t as unpleasant as it should have been that it still was.) and opened the browser.

“So angry spirits are born out of violent deaths, right?” He said as his thumbs flew over the keyboard.

Fili sniffed. “Yeah, I know that. What is this, hunter theory for toddlers?”

“I find it worrying you think this is the sort of thing a toddler should know.”

“You knew it.”

“Exactly.” Kili clicked a link, skimmed it to see if it fit, then offered the phone back to Fili. “My point is violent doesn’t always mean murder.”

Fili looked at his phone and the article Kili had found and let out a soft ‘huh’. It was the only suicide on the Smethport Bridge, at least the only one that could be brought up online; they would have to go to the library and do a search of old papers but Kili had a good feeling about this one. At least as good a feeling as there could be when dealing with angry spirits who kept killing people.

“1991, Connie Welch, 24 years old. Jumps off bridge, drowns. An hour before they find her body she called 911; her two young kids were swimming behind the house in the creek. She leaves them alone to grab something from the house, comes back and they’re facedown in the water. Both die.” Fili read, voice hushed. “Well. That’d do it.”

“No kidding.” Kili agreed. They knew first hand what losing family could do to a person; Thorin had never been suicidal, that Kili knew of at least, but then waging a near one man war against all the monsters in the world wasn’t exactly the best way to stay alive either. Either way Kili knew the man Fili had known the first five years of his life and the one he’d known all of his were very different.

Once Thorin had been part of a network of hunters, ten of them spread over the country who helped each other out and got together for big hunts. In Kili’s lifetime he’d seen that network dwindle, all of them drifting away from Thorin and those who didn’t leave on their own driven away (Bilbo. Dwalin, depending on the day.) until all Thorin had was Fili. That was the man Kili knew, obsessed, prickly, secretive. Hard to know or understand.

It was the first man, the old Thorin, that Fili was so loyal to. That and the memories of a mother and uncle Kili didn’t have. At least that’s what he had long suspected.

“We need to go back to the bridge.” Fili declared. “Tonight, after all the cops have cleared out.”

“And until then?”

“We go to that other motel, see if we can find any signs of Thorin. See if this lady’s husband is still around, find out where she’s buried.” Fili snagged the last piece of bacon from Kili’s plate then slide out of the booth. “You know, the boring stuff you always liked.”

\---

“Well.” Fili declared as he looked around Thorin’s motel room. “This is weird.”

Kili turned in a slow circle, looking from the pictures of all the victims and notes in his uncle's scratchy handwriting tacked to one wall, printouts of sigils, old pages of what looked like demon or witch burning scenes torn right from books, strings of cat's eye shells, and hastily chalked symbols on another, to the salt and brick lines on the floor and devils trap painted on the ceiling. The scent of sage was heavy in the air.

“Yeah. Weird.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deciding what to keep/go in depth with is the hardest part of adapting this episode, true story. 
> 
> Also, things I'm excited to tweak and have come out of Fili's mouth at some point: "So who do you think is the hotter psychic? Patricia Arquette, Jennifer Love Hewitt, or you?" (Direct quote, things Dean says to his baby brother.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tiny breakdowns all over the place.

Kili headed straight for the wall displaying the pictures of the victims. They were lined up by date of incident and each had push pins and string in various colors leading to newspaper clippings, print outs, bits of pages from old books, and notecards full of Thorin's scribbled notes. He reached out, plucking one of the cards from the wall and bringing it closer. It was, he realized, basic information on the first victim. Date of birth, age at time of death, date of marriage, the route he'd taken to get to Smethport, possible stops along the way.

He flipped it over to the back and found the word ‘Affair’ written in thick lettering followed by question marks and circled in red multiple times. He moved to the next one and found the same kind of notes, this time with ‘Affair’ circled so hard a hole had been poked into the card. He checked the third and fifth, not bothering to do more than lift the cards to check the backs; an idea was forming. Dead children, suicide, mysteriously vanishing men, affairs...he knew this. He’d learned it, could almost hear Thorin’s voice in his ear droning through the lesson. He reached for it, stretched his mind back to try and find the memory and- not Thorin, it wasn’t Thorin he remembered. It was Fili, explaining something their uncle had rambled on about but had been too impatient to take the time to fill in the gaps for Kili’s ever curious mind. Thorin had wanted them to just accept things, know as much of the lore as it took to kill whatever was out there, and leave it at that but Kili had always been hungry for more.

He’d wanted to know all the details, to understand the hows and whys. What happened when people died, why did some move on and others became spirits, why were some just impressions and echos but others could be solid enough to kill, why were some bound to people or a single place and others seemed able to roam for miles, to cross countries and oceans.

Where had their mother gone and why hadn’t she stayed like others had?

He’d known it all forwards and backwards once but now it was dulling around the edges, right there but not quite within grasp. But Fili would know.

“Fili,” he started, turning to face his brother, but his question died on his tongue.

Fili was standing in front of the other wall, staring at the runes and drawn on it. He was deflated, smaller than he had been before stepping into the room, expression bewildered. His shoulders were rigid, body starting to curve in on itself, eyes dark, and  skin turned ashen under the usual golden tint. He was looking at the wall but Kili was positive he wasn’t actually seeing it: no, he was staring past it at nothing at all. His hands were at his side, reflexively curling and uncurling, and Kili could see the tension in his body, see that he was straining against it, muscles whipcord tight.

He looked lost.

Kili stepped back from the wall and let himself really look around. He looked past the case and saw...everything else. The devil’s traps, the shells, the symbols, the other stuff on the walls. Some of it was downright gruesome, pictures of imps and gremlins pulling people apart, women being burned at the stake, babies in baskets with shadows looming over them- More notes. Dozens of notecards covered in sharp, jerky scrawl in different inks, overlapped with pictures and more symbols. There were fast food bags and soda bottles stacked on every available surface, the odor of rot and stale air lingered around them.

It was obvious no one had been through in a few days but Kili was willing to guess that things had been well out of control before Thorin had abandoned his room, at the very least the food was from a few different days, and that just didn’t make any sense.

Their uncle was methodical when it came to hunts, he researched and catalogued and color coded things, labeled folders, kept everything rolling with military precision. He didn’t get messy or let trash build up because that sort of thing was a distraction and he couldn’t afford that. He didn’t like to take risks when it came to tracking and taking something down and he’d instilled the same in Fili and Kili. He was never out of control (though there was no denying that he had a temper, some paranoid tendencies, and an unhealthy obsession that was never far from his mind) but this. This was the opposite of control and nothing like Thorin. It was disorganized, messy like...like someone who was going off the deep end.

It didn’t bode well and he could tell Fili was thinking the same, that his brother had moved right past worried. His brother looked almost afraid and painfully unsure and that was no more Fili than all of this shit was Thorin but Kili got it. All of this had to be like the worst kind of nightmare; he’d suspected something was wrong, and they’d always joked about Thorin going over the edge one day, but Kili was certain he hadn’t expected whatever the hell this was. Thorin was rock solid, always, the only thing in Fili’s life that could be called that (and that was Kili’s fault and he knew it but-) and now he wasn’t. It wasn’t fair; there was a spark of anger, rage, because how could their uncle do this to Fili, just disappear with some cryptic message and this bullshit when he had to know it would be like pulling the floor out from under Fili, why-

He pushed it aside, cursing himself as a hypocrite.

“Fee?” He tried again, crossing the room to stand next to his brother; Fili didn’t so much as glance his way or even blink. His first thought was to reach out and do something, what he didn’t know as he went to do it, but found himself stopping short, unable to close the gap.

_“Can’t you just be my brother for a weekend?”_

He clenched his hand into a fist as if that would, somehow, banish the tight, dark feeling clawing inside his chest. He didn’t want to have to question this, to hesitate and wonder about all the things wrapped up in it, to worry that he was overstepping and doing the wrong thing. He didn’t want to wonder about what normal brothers would do, especially when he knew if it was the other way around Fili wouldn’t hesitate.  

“Hey? Are you okay?” He gripped his brother’s shoulder and shook him lightly. Blue eyes widened and, all at once, Fili was ducking away from him and brushing his hand away in the same motion. Kili froze, hand hovering, fingers flexing as the echo of Fili’s warmth faded, uncertain. Fili smiled, empty and strained, and shook his head.

“Right, right. Sorry. I was...look at all this shit. I don’t know half of these runes, and layering brick and salt?” Fili stooped down, fingers hovering above the line nearest to him. “This is heavy duty protection, for something big, something he wanted to keep from coming in.”

Or it was paranoia. Kili wasn’t sure how much faith they should put into whatever precautions Thorin had felt like he needed for this, but saying that now would only make things worse. He didn’t think they could take much ‘worse’ at the moment.

“Fili, this-”

“What did you find over there?” His brother didn’t give him a chance to speak, standing and darting away to look at the wall. “This is all the victims? Do you think Thorin figured something out?”

Kili knew deflection. He was an expert on deflection. He sighed then shrugged. “Don’t know, but I think so. There’s something I remember? About different kinds of ghosts? I think that’s the answer.” Kili said, turning back to the case wall. “The Rainbow.”

“The wh-oh! The Rainbow.” Fili squinted at him. “That drawing? That’s still how you remember that stuff? Seriously?”

Kili offered up the note cards he’d taken with a frown. “I was a kid.”

_“You’re teaching him with crayons and pictures?” Mr. Bofur asked as he handed over the rifle’s bolt. It was a bit big in Kili’s hands but everything about the gun was too big. He was learning to work around it the same way he had to work around everything else if he wanted to hunt with Fili and their uncle. He either ‘kept up’ or got left behind._

_“Yeah.” Fili made a face. “You got a problem with how I teach my brother?”_

_Kili slid the bolt into place, turning and then pushing it into place as far as it would go, connecting it to the support, then moving the bolt support forward. It was muscle memory at this point, he’d been taking apart and putting the rifle together over and over since Bofur had brought it to him at Thorin’s request. It was brand new, runes and blessings laid into the parts, various ammo types already made up for him._

_He had to learn to take care of it and then he would learn to shoot it. He was already good with the bow but Dwalin had called that, and the crossbow, ‘fucking medieval’ and likely to get him killed fucking about with. A rifle and scope, he and Thorin had eventually agreed, was the way to go if he was going to go on hunts to watch their backs._

_Bilbo had taken one look at it, turned a sickly shade of green, and grabbed Thorin to take him somewhere, Dwalin following behind with a resigned look on his face. Bofur had been smart enough to duck out of sight until Bilbo was gone._

_Kili didn’t expect to see any of his uncles for a while yet._

_“Nope.” Next came the return spring, plucked from Bofur’s open hand. “Don’t know much about teach little kids about spirits, do I?”_

_“Not little.” Kili muttered. “‘M ten.”_

_“Oh.” Bofur put his free hand up, palm towards him. “My apologies Kili, I don’t know what I was thinking, but right you are. Won’t happen again.”_

_Kili was old enough to know when adults were making fun of him. He looked up at Fili, found his brother glaring at Bofur, and returned to what he was doing. Fili would take care of it._

_“Kili knows more than some people three times his age.” His brother said, pushing a sheet of paper covered in different colored arches, layered like a rainbow (though the colors weren’t right) in front of him. “What’s the rainbow Kee?”_

_“Gray ladies lose babies before they’re born and are rejected by their husbands before they die. They wander, looking for their family. Brown ladies are tortured and killed by their husbands. They want revenge. Red ladies feel isolated and abandoned, or are tormented by their peers, and kill themselves. They want revenge too.” He pushed down down on the cover to make it fit to the receiver then turned the axle pin forward. Bofur muttered ‘What ten year old says peers?’ but a dark look from Fili had him going quiet and gesturing for Kili to keep going._

_“Blue ladies have forbidden love. ...lovers?” He glanced at Fili who nodded absently, already working on another drawing in bright orange crayon. Kili liked Fili’s drawings more than he did Thorin’s books; things were easier to remember when he could think of the pictures. “And die because of it. They want to be back together with their lover. White ladies-”_

“Betrayed by a husband.” Fili said, tearing down the last notecard. He dropped all the cards on the table and spread them out face down, ‘Affair’ visible on the back of each in Thorin’s handwriting. “Affairs, usually, then they snap and kill the kids before kill themselves. The guilt keeps them here, lashing out at other cheaters. Connie Welch is a white lady.”

Fili paused then, smiling wryly, added. “Thorin figured it out and so did you, mostly. You aren’t as rusty as I thought.”

Kili stared at the cards, the tight feeling in his chest only getting worse. If Thorin had figured it out, and he must have if Kili had been able to get most of the way there with just his notes, then what had gone wrong? He hadn’t gotten rid of the spirit, not if she’d struck the night before, and he wasn’t here, so where the hell was he?

“We’ll get rid of it tonight.” Fili said, tapping the back of the cards. “Find out where she’s buried, dig her up, salt and burn, get some breakfast after. Just like old times.”

“Then what? We get rid of the ghost and…?” Kili let it hang there, knowing Fili would hear the unspoken ‘what about Thorin’ in the question. Some part of him was dreading the answer but he needed it all the same.

“We keep digging, trace his steps. Might take awhile or he might be waiting wherever her bones are, I don’t know.” Fili raked fingers through his hair, knocking the tie loose. They both watched it fall; Fili nudged at it with his toe. “We just...keep looking.”

That was about what he’d expected. “I have to get back, you know that. My interview-” Fili’s nose scrunched up in irritation. “Don’t do that, don’t make that face. It’s my whole future, Fili, I’ve been planning this for years.”

“And it’s more important than uncle.”

“Yes!” The answer came before he could stop it but, even when Fili flinched, he wasn’t sure he wanted to take it back. “I want this. I need it.”

Fili scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Right. Your safe life where you what, become a doctor, marry the girl?”

He didn’t know if the was the bitterness or the derision in Fili’s words that was worse. It didn’t matter because either way he recoiled, put distance between them that he felt acutely as soon as it was there, and pushed back. “Maybe, yes. Why is it so bad to not what *this* to be my life?”

“You have a responsibility-”

“To-to who? Thorin? And his crusade? That...that isn’t mine. If it wasn’t for pictures and stories I wouldn’t know what mom or Frerin look like. They might as well be characters in a story.” Kili looked up at the ceiling, blinking hard, all the things he never let himself say sitting on his tongue. “What difference does it make? Finding what killed them, killing it? It doesn’t bring them back, it doesn’t fix anything. Nothing changes. You think Thorin’s going to stop, or do you think he’ll just find something else to throw himself at?”

There was no going back and all going forward did was make them slide deeper and deeper into things. It was making Thorin insane, maybe literally. He didn’t want to watch Fili turn into their uncle or worse, die right in front of him. Kili didn’t want to wake up twenty years down the line in a trashed motel room with nothing but guns and fake IDs to keep him company because he’d become his uncle.

If that was what Fili wanted then he could have that life but Kili didn’t have to. He had options. He had a different life.

He saw Fili coming, knew he’d pushed too far (again. It was always him who ended up crossing lines and Fili who got dragged over them as well, even when he didn’t want to be.) and braced himself for whatever was coming next, be it shouting or fighting.

It turned out to be neither. A hand gripped his shirt to haul him down so there were nearly nose to nose and then...nothing. Fili’s nostrils flared and his pupils stretched, reducing the blue to a thin ring around the outside, and Kili could feel him practically vibrating with emotion. But then he let him go and pushed past him.

“Gather up what you think we’ll need, try to find where she’s buried if you can. I’m getting some air. Meet back at the car in twenty.”

He left without another word, not even slamming the door on his way out. Kili let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

Right.

Great.

Kili resisted the temptation to just drop down onto the bed and stay there or to take out his phone and call Tauriel. She’d already given him one pep talk today, he couldn’t go crawling to her in need of another one. Instead began to move around the room again, picking up a few odds and ends and throwing them into a bag Thorin must have left behind and taking pictures of symbols to look up later. He was taking down a towel from over the dresser mirror when he spotted something familiar.

A picture, tucked into the corner of the mirror. The last time he’d seen it had been in the impala, tucked up in the visor. It was Thorin, sitting on the hood of the car, Fili smiling at his side, and Kili sitting on Thorin’s knee, his uncle’s arms looped around his waist to keep him steady. Kili must couldn’t have been more than five or six, and looked ridiculous in Fili’s oversized hand me down jacket and beanie, and Fili had been going through a pokemon t-shirt phase he would no doubt want forgotten. Thorin looked younger than any of Kili’s memories ever made him, hair not yet going gray and face unlined and scarless.

They all looked happy.

Kili didn't remember anything like that, thought he’d seen this picture a hundred times.

He plucked it free and carefully set it inside a book before putting it into the duffle bag.

Kili was feeling decidedly down when his phone rang a few minutes later. A look at the screen told him it was Fili; brow furrowing in confusion he swiped to answer. He wasn’t late getting back to the car, was he?

“What’s up?”

“Well. I think I’m about to get arrested.”

“What!? I left you alone for five minutes!” He all but leapt for the door, nearly tripping over the bag he’d been loading, and slammed into the wall with a curse.  

Fili giggled (*giggled*!) then coughed. “Look, man, take off. Find Thorin and-”

“I’m not leaving you.” Kili hissed. Was Fili already going as crazy as Thorin? Yes, they had some issues and yes, Fili was absolutely going to be the thing that ruined him one day (And he knew they both knew it) but he wasn’t going to ditch him. How could he even suggest that?

“You have your real ID on you right? How is being arrested going to look in that inter- Hello officer!” Kili pulled the phone away from his face, staring at in horror. Shit! What did he do? Go find them and...what, fight the cops? Talk Fili out of trouble? Was that even possible? “What can I do for you?”

“Where’s your partner?” A muffled voice demanded.

Kili swore he could hear Fili grinning. “Partner? I’ll have you know we prefer the term lifemate or husb-”

“Oh my god.” Kili said to no one in the same breath someone barked “Check that room, 202!” He hesitated, glaring at the door, then turned back around. He scooped up the bag and headed for the bathroom, zeroing in on the window above the tub. It was going to be a tight fit but he’d managed worse and there was no way he could be in this room when the cops came to check it.

Fili was right, he couldn’t afford to get arrested. Not that his brother could, especially if they started poking into the many layers of his fake identification and, fuck, he couldn’t let them get the car. The weapons, the badges, the fake passports.

He hated when Fili was right.

\---

Mr. Welch lived about an ninety minutes from the motel. It hadn’t taken long to track him down once Kili had been sure he’d managed to get away clean and then had a small panic attack about how he was supposed to handle this alone. He’d never, **ever** , had to go it alone for a hunt, period, and sure as hell not when Fili was in jail but somehow he was supposed to do it now?

He’d paced a little on the side of a one lane, dusty road to nowhere, hyperventilated, sat on the loose gravel contemplating various ways to break into a jail and break out without being seen, leaving evidence, or getting shot, and then finally decided he should do what Fili told him to do.

Which brought him to Mr. Welch. The man was late fifties, maybe sixties, now and looked every inch of it. Skin dry and creased all over, hair steel gray under his ballcap, eyes rheumy and yellowing, shoulders slumped like under a heavy weight. The lines around his mouth were deep and downturned.

If someone had told Kili this was a man who hadn’t smiled in decades he would have no trouble believing it.

He introduced himself then held out the old picture, asking if he’d seen the older man in it.

“Yeah, that’s him. Older now, course. Said he was a reporter?” Mr. Welch leaned against the door frame, arms crossed over his chest. “Asked about my wife.”

Kili nodded. “That’s right. We’re working on a story together.”

The man’s expression darkened, turned angry, and his tone sharpened. “Don’t know what kind of story you’re working on, asking questions about where Connie is buried and the like.”

Kili nodded again, wheels turning in his head. “And where was that again? Just...fact checking. Very important.”

Mr. Welch didn’t look convinced and his words were slower, thoughtful. “In a plot behind the old place, over on the ridge. Wanted her to be with the kids, even if I couldn’t stand to be there after...after everything.”

The lines in his face seemed to deepen ever further; he looked down, swallowing audibly, and Kili swallowed too. He licked his lips, trying to weigh his words but he knew it was taking too long when Mr. Welch looked at him again, suspension in his watery eyes.

“You never remarried?” Kili asked the question at the small notebook he’d brought along, making a show of putting pen to paper in readiness.

“No, no. Couldn’t. Connie was the love of my life.”

Kili gripped his pen tighter. “You had a happy marriage then. No disputes. Big issues? No...other people?”

Mr. Welch jerked in alarm then glared up at him. “What’re the hell are you asking?”

Kili swallowed again, trying to work moisture back into his dry mouth. He didn’t want to do this but he had to. He had to be sure they were right. “Have you ever heard of a woman in white? It’s a ghost tale, from places as far apart as Mexico and Hawaii or Europe and...here. Different women but they all share the same story, a common tragedy that keeps them walking the earth.”

“Boy, I don’t care much for nonsense.” Mr. Welch said, a nerve in his cheek twitching.

And Kili didn’t like being called boy so he figured they were even on that front, though not for what he was about to say next. “When they were alive their husbands were unfaithful to them and these women murdered their children. Then, when they realize what they’ve done, they killed themselves.” Mr. Welch flinched again. “After that they travel back roads, waterways, old highways, hunting. And when they find an unfaithful man they kill him, and leave nothing behind.”

Mr. Welch went white as a sheet then green and, finally, so red his face was almost purple. He took a step forward into the frigid air, breath leaving his mouth in misty puffs, one after the other, and pointed a finger up at Kili. “I don’t know who you think you are and maybe-maybe I did some things I shouldn’t have but Connie? Connie would have **never** hurt our children. Never. Put that in your fucking article. Now get the hell out of here.”  

Kili didn’t need to be told twice. He had his answer; Mr. Welch had been unfaithful and that meant there was a very good chance they were right about Connie being the woman in white. Being right was good and yet he could only think of one other time in life he’d felt like such a complete piece of shit and that had been when he’d decided to run away.

Not because he’d left but because he’d done while Fili was still recovering, without so much as a goodbye. He’d gone to the hospital on a Friday, nodded along with Fili while he babbled about busting out of the hospital, tried not to lose it every time he looked at the uneven fuzz on half of his brother’s skull of the jagged line and staples where they’d cut his head open and put it back together. A dozen different doctors and nurses had been in and out, telling them that it actually hadn’t been ‘that’ bad and that the busted leg was worse, in the grand scheme of thing, but Kili never felt sick when he looked at the elevated leg or the cast.

He’d wished, as he rolled his eyes at Fili bitching about terrible TV, that it was some other image of his brother that he could take with him when he left. Strong, confident Fili, not hooked up to machines and IVs, doped up, sometimes so much that he confessed he was worried about the Next. About the headaches they said he might get, about ‘neurological’ damage, about his leg and how it would probably never be the same, about what that meant for _hunting,_ and that made Kili’s stomach turn too.

He’d left, smiled and laughed as he promised to be back on Monday because he was crashing at Gimli’s for the weekend, walked down to the bus station, and got on a bus for Pennsylvania.

He’d left his phone in the hospital bathroom.

He hadn’t done it to be cruel anymore than he’d questioned Mr. Welch to be. He’d done it because he’d had to, because anything else wouldn’t have worked. If Fili had known he would have asked him to stay and Kili would have done it. It wasn’t even a question, it was a certainty. Fili would have looked at him, battered and bruised and broken and sad, and said ‘Don’t leave,’ and all the courage Kili had built up would have collapsed and all of his reasons would have been forgotten.  

If only one thing this was true in Kili’s life it was that he had a weak, irrational and stupid, spot shaped like his brother and it probably made up his entire heart.

Or, maybe, just too damn much of it.

He didn’t let himself thing on it too much more as he got the gps to point him towards the Welchs’ old house. It was going to take over three hours (Kili fucking hated the country and how people lived in ‘towns’ only insofar as that town was the closest one to them) and sundown was about thirty minutes off. It was probably for the best that this was going to be at night (digging up and burning bodies during the day was just asking for trouble.) but that was a lot of time to sit in the car and think.

He tried to focus on getting Fili’s stupid ass out of jail and about ninety minutes (and many attempts to steer himself away from thoughts of the past) later he had an idea. A terrible idea that he just knew Fili was going to love. He pulled over and left the car, Fili’s phone and a gun in hand.  

“Hello, police?” He pitched his voice higher, made it nasally and stretched his words out, when the 911 operator picked up. “I want to report shots fired over on Buford road! Lots of them, whole car full of boys just shooting as they go down the pass! You need to send someone, before they hurt somebody.”

He pointed his gun down and away and, leaning back some, pulled the trigger. The man on the other end yelped and, once he’d gotten a hand free and could get the phone from where it was pinched between his shoulder and ear, he made a dramatic gurgling sound and disconnected the call.

And tossed the phone into the snow, silently promising to get Fili a new throwaway after this.

There could only be so many officers in a place like Smethport and If Fili couldn’t make most of them running out for a fake 911 call work in his favor then he deserved to stay there for the night and stew.

...but more likely Kili would go and physically break him out, consequences be damned.

His phone rang twenty minutes later; he didn’t even get a word out before Fili was talking.

“A fake 911 call? That’s kind of illegal.” He sounded incredibly pleased. “I’m so proud. Can we just take a moment to really let this sink in?”

“Shut up.” Kili said, smiling in spite of himself. “Listen, I talked to the husband, he was unfaithful. She’s definitely a woman in white. She’s buried behind her old house, I’m on my way, but Thorin already knew.”

“Kee, can you shut up?” Fili cut in, laughter still in his voice.

“What I can’t figure out,” Kili continued, heedless of his brother’s deep sigh. “Is why he hasn’t burned her already? What’s the point of waiting?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, he’s gone. Thorin left Smethport.”

Kili almost dropped his phone, and drove into the other lane. “He what? How do you know?”

“I’ve got his journal.”

Kili sucked in a breath. Thorin’s journal? The journal. Their uncle had been writing in that thing, about hunts and the thing that killed their mother and people he’d met and helped or had helped him and just...everything under the sun for the past twenty some odd years. He didn’t go anywhere without it. He didn’t even let Fili touch the thing. Kili had always assumed he’d die before he parted with it, or the car, and now Fili had both.

...well, technically Kili had the car  at the moment.

“How?”

“The cops took it out of his room before we even showed up. Old man got pinged for credit card fraud and they were sitting on the place waiting for him to come back, and caught me instead.” Fili said dismissively. “The point is, he’s gone.”

“What’s it say?”

Fili groaned. “You know, that same old military crap he always does when he wants us to know where he is, but doesn’t want anyone else to know?”

“Coordinates. Where to?”  

“Washington State.”

Of course. The only place they’d ever stayed for any length of time, Blue Mountain, Washington. Dwalin’s garage was there, Bilbo was there, Gloin and his family were there, and for a few years he’d actually thought they might stay there and be vaguely normal. And then Thorin had decided to be very Thorin about things and they’d left one night without knowing why. Dwalin they’d kept in touch with, Bilbo they hadn’t and…

Actually, that all sounded very familiar, now that he was thinking about it.

Well, never let it be said he hadn’t a template to follow when it came to becoming who he was.

“Fili, what’s going on here?”

“I don’t know.” Fili admitted quietly. “But I don’t-”

“Whoa!” Kili was not ashamed to say he shrieked as he slammed down onto the brakes. He’d only looked away from the road for a second, blinked maybe, and what had been a straight show devoid of anything was suddenly a woman in a white dress right in front of him. And he knew, even as he put all of his weight into braking and jerked on the wheel, what was happening. It was her, dark haired and deathly pale.

He skidded through her, a chill running up his spine and heart leaping up into his throat as he did. The tires squealed its way to a stop, the phone fell away to god only knew where, the tinny sound of Fili frantically _shouting_ his name filling the car. Kili lurched forward when the car finally stopped, grip on the wheel so tight the color was gone from his knuckles. He was panting, sweating, and shaking, gaze fixed on the shine of the headlights cutting through the night.

“Kili?! Kili, say something!”

Icy air blew against the side of his neck and hair rasped against his ear. “Take me home.”

Fili’s shouts cut off abruptly.  

Chilly hands touched his shoulder and slide down his chest; her lips pressed against his ear. Her voice was sugar sweet, alluring, begging him so prettily as she repeated herself. "Please. Take me home." 

Kili recoiled from her touch. "No!" 

There was a moment of silence and then loud clicks as the locks slammed into place. The engine revved and the gear shaft shifted, moved by a force that wasn't him. He could only watch as the car started to roll, slowly at first but swiftly picking up speed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *moves chapter count to five* It's actually four and an epilogue but. Yeah. Jokes on me for thinking I could wrap this up in one or two.


	4. Chapter 4

The ride was both agonizingly long and over far too fast for Kili’s tastes. They raced down the highway at speeds that were, frankly, alarming, rounded a corner onto a less maintained road with a screech of tires and the sharp tink-tink of gravel hitting metal, and then hurtled along a winding road the cut through dense forest area. Even if he could have opened the door, and he did try to pull up the lock only to find it held firmly in place no matter how he tugged, he wouldn’t have really tried it, not that those speeds. The car shook under the strain the spirit was forcing upon it, hard enough that Kili could feel the rattle in his teeth and was honestly afraid the impala would break down or crash. 

And, as much a he wasn’t looking forward to dying in a fiery wreck he also didn’t want to imagine how Fili would react to losing Kili and his beloved car all at once. Worse than all that was that  Fili would absolutely do the guilt thing and blame himself for not being there and for them parting on such...rocky terms, and Kili would probably end up as angry spirit his brother had to take care of because of his own fucking guilt and wouldn’t that just be the cherry on the crazy sundae that was their family? Banishing each other’s ghosts because of negative feelings caused by their messed up relationship? 

No, no, Kili refused to become some angry spirit with ‘Guilt over Unrealized Incestual Feelings’ as the root cause. That was just too fucked up for even them and, so, the only way to deal with this was to not die. He couldn’t do that, not to Fili, not now. And not to Tauriel, who was waiting for him to come back and would never know or understand what had happened to him if he died here. She deserved better than whatever hollow story Fili would have to spin if something happened to him, and Fili deserved more than having to face her with that. 

He couldn’t die, he-

Wait.

He sucked in a breath then let it out, forcing himself to look not at the trees flashing by at worrying speeds but on the image of Connie Welch in the rearview mirror. She was sitting there, deathly pale and dressed in a flowing white, tattered lace dress. Her hair hung in loose waves and her eyes were sad and downcast. With her shoulders hunched and her hands folded in her lap she was the picture of demure grief, far from the image of a ghost that had been systematically killing men with, seemingly, no remorse at all. Not that he knew if ghosts could feel remorse or if the killing was some kind of compulsion they couldn’t fight or what exactly happened with spirits that became vengeful like this. 

He doubted she was going to consent to an interview. 

She looked up, eyes locking with his in the mirror then looked out of the window, lips parting around a mournful sigh. They turned another corner onto a more narrow road and, a few second later, emerged before a house. It was two stories with wooden siding that had once been white but was now dingy gray in places the paint clung on and bare weathered wood in others. The wrap around porch was sunken in places, the stairs broken and twisted, and the wide expanse of front lawn was overgrown with yellowing weeds that had managed to defeat even the layer of snow spread over them. The windows were mostly broken or missing, staring out into the night like hollowed out eyes, and the front door was hanging from the bottom hinge, tilted so far to the side it could barely be called ‘standing’. 

“I can never go home.” She said, voice choked with longing. Her gaze was fixed ahead, on the shell of a house. Kili looked from her to the building then back, realization sparking to life. 

“You’re afraid to go home.” He frowned slightly; that felt right, had the ring of truth to it, but he didn’t understand. What could scare a ghost? Why couldn’t she go home if that’s what she truly wanted? What was stopping her. 

She closed her eyes and flickered, vanished and then she was in the seat next to him, leaning into his space, breathing icy air against his cheek. “I can never go home and now neither can you.” 

His stomach twisted even as he slowly shook his head. “You can’t kill me.” 

A dark eyebrow lifted. “No?” 

Oh, good, she could say more than two or three things. That was...encouraging? Maybe? Assuming he could reason and have a conversation with her, anyway. 

“No. There are rules, a...a way you do things. You kill cheaters.” He said, wincing a little at how his voice was shaking. He wasn’t as confident in what he was saying as he wanted to be but he certainly hoped he was right about her and that whatever bound her a Lady in White was something she couldn’t decide to ignore as she saw fit.  “I’ve never cheated.” 

She tilted her head to the side, curls slipping down over her shoulders in a glossy wave, and leaned even closer. He pushed himself back against the door but once he was flat against it there was nowhere to go, not with her still able to control the car and keep him from opening the door.  She continued to creep forward, hands coming down against the window on either side of his head, until her body was pressed against his. Her eyes were wide and, with her so close their noses were nearly touching, he could see that the whites were a milky yellow, shot through with busted vessels. 

Her hair brushed against his skin and dripped ice cold water onto him. “Liar.” 

He jerked back in shock, head colliding with the glass. Pain crawled over his scalp as he squinted up at her. “W-what? No! I’ve never-”

“Liar!” She shrieked, voice changing from it’s low, almost seductive rumble, to something akin to nails on a chalkboard. “I can see everything you’ve done and I know what you really are. You’re the worst kind.” 

She flickered again and then she was straddling his lap, wedged between him and the wheel, hands gripping his shirt. She was a chilly weight against him, heavier than he would have thought and very much solid. She hissed at him, body flickering in and out so rapidly it made his eyes burn to stay focused on her. 

“You say you love her and you mean it. You mean it so much that it hurts you but that doesn’t stop you from wanting someone else. It doesn’t stop you from thinking about him when you’re with her.” 

Kili’s heart skipped a beat and his stomach dropped. He shook his head, a denial that he knew neither of them believed. “That isn’t...it doesn’t-”

She let go of his shirt only to grip his face in an iron grip. “You lie everytime you touch her. Men like you...you hurt them the most because no matter how hard she tries, no matter how much you want her to be the One, she’ll never be enough. You’ll never be her’s but you’ll lie and say you are. I can see the truth in men’s hearts, I know how broken you really are, and nothing you say can hide it from me.” 

“That’s not true.” He whispered faintly, suddenly breathless and reeling under the weight of her words. 

She was wrong. Kili needed her to be wrong, needed to believe that and will it to be true and yet she looked down at him with dark eyes that saw straight through him and he...didn’t know. He wavered, believed her because wasn’t she right? Wasn’t she just telling him the things he only let himself think late at night, when his disgust with himself was at it’s peak? When Tauriel was asleep at his side, warm and safe and offering him the very life he’d run away to attain, but all he could think about was how sick and wrong he was, how twisted up inside he must have been, how fucked up, how completely flawed on the most fundamental of levels he might always be. There were some things that were just supposed to never happen, lines that shouldn’t be crossed, and Kili couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been on the wrong side of it. 

For him loving Fili in all the wrong ways had always, always, been as natural and easy as breathing and that was why he’d had not choice but to run and then stay away. 

And now...now he had everything he wanted at his fingertips and he still couldn’t get his own brother out of his head.

She was just repeating his greatest fears: that no matter how much time passed or how long he stayed away that at the end of everything he would only end up hurting everyone because it would always be Fili, no matter how much he wished otherwise? Was he really that wrapped up in his brother? 

Once upon a time they’d practically lived in each other’s skin, never apart for long, able to finish each other’s sentences, thoughts, movements without so much as a glance between them. Could there ever be anyone else in his life like that? 

Connie smirked at him, triumphant and cruel, and pushed down against his chest. There was pressure and-

Pain. The world went white then black as a razor’s edge of pain slashed over every nerve ending in his body, setting them alight with one bone rattling strike. He screamed, back arching up and then convulsing violently. He felt her hand in his chest, the ghost of fingers moving through him as waves of bone chilling cold radiated out. Her hand flexed, fingers curling around his heart, and squeezed. His throat tightened, his stomach churned, and he tasted metal on the back of his tongue, not blood but something else, something dark and furious and nickel coated. 

The world shattered into colors and broken fragments of things, snatches of remembered words and scenes that circled around in his head then drained away to leave

Pain. 

Somewhere an owl hooted twice. 

Moving hurt so much it was unthinkable to do so but for Kili it was less a conscious thought and more muscle memory, something ingrained not just in his brain but in every fiber of his being. His hand dropped down and found the seat adjustment lever. He yanked it hard and fell back with it when it went, barely a second before a thunderous crack shook the air and glass rained down on him. 

The ghost flickered and he could breath for a moment before she became solid again, hand still tight around his heart. Another gun shot, a third, and a fourth and she was gone, turning away with a howl and vanishing from sight. Gone but still there, he could feel the chill of her presence and taste the salt-nickel tang of her rage. 

He sat up, chest aching like he’d taken a dozen of Dwalin’s punches to it, and groped for the gear shift to put the car back into drive. 

“Kee?” Fili asked from somewhere but Kili didn’t look. He could only see the house in front of him. 

He was going to take Connie home. 

Fili was going to knock his teeth down his throat if they survived this. 

The car lurched forward then took off, barreling forward towards the ramshackle house. It shuddered and jerked when it smashed into, then through, the porch right into the side of the house to roll into what looked like it might had been a dining room once upon a time if the table and chairs that turned to splinters as the car tore through them were anything to go by. Only then did he stomp down on the brakes. The force of the stop threw him forward into the wheel and, for one long, pained moment he stayed there, slumped over it. Everything hurt.

“Kili?” The door creaked open. “I know you’re alive, I can hear you wheezing.” 

“Fuck you.” Kili grumbled. Then, lifting his head to meet blue eyes blown wide with emotion, finally let himself see what had happened. The driver’s side window was gone, completely destroyed with only a few shatter bits of glass clinging to the frame.

“Can you move?” Fili was already reaching in and grabbing onto him, trying to drag him free of the car. Kili made a noise that he wanted to be a ‘yes’ but might have actually been a ‘Fuck why did I think that was a good idea’. He stumbled free of the car, nearly pitched over except Fili was there, holding him up. 

There was something to that, something a distant part of his brain wanted to have him acknowledge but now wasn’t really the time. He lifted his head, not really hearing Fili’s relieved “What the hell is wrong with you?” as he spotted Connie standing off in a still intact corner of the room, an old picture frame in her hand. She looked up at them, expression flickering from sadness to longing and finally settling on rage. Her face changed completely, lost it’s soft beauty to become a grinning, bleached skull with empty eye socks. 

The frame hit the floor with a clatter. She flicked her wrist and a dresser jumped from it’s place against a wall and hurtled towards them. There was no time to move or even brace themselves as the heavy object slammed into them, pushing them back to pink them against the car. Connie took a step and was in front of them, death’s head face laughing as she leaned over the dresser. First she seemed to go for Kili, hand outstretched then, all at once she flickered and was in front of Fili. 

Who rolled his eyes. “You can’t touch me.” 

Kili expected her to call him out because of course she would. Fili had moved from lover to lover when they’d been younger, a new one in every town they were in, starting around the time Kili turned sixteen. Kili had thought, in his more bitter moments, that Fili was trying to prove something to him but in the worst moments, when he’d be alone with nothing but the endless confusion and self-loathing that had marked his last two years with his brother and uncle, he’d thought that maybe it wasn’t about him at all. Maybe it was Fili doing what he wanted with absolutely no thought to Kili because Kili just...didn’t matter in that way. 

In times like that he’d hoped Fili was trying to hurt him because that would be better that just not being a factor at all. 

He didn’t expect her to howl in rage, human visage returning so they could see the fury etched into every line of her soft face and the fire in her eyes. Her hands slammed down onto the surface of the dresser, cracking it like it was little more paper to her. 

“Watch him die instead.” She hissed; Fili’s smirk twitched then fell. “You’ll never return home again either.” 

“Mommy?” A child’s voice called. Wood creaked and a sound like running water filled the air. 

Connie whipped around, towards the stairs on the far side of the room, and let out a wet gurgling noise. Kili watched, mouth dropping in shock as two small children appeared at the top of the stairs. They were both washed out of all color, skin paper white and hair ink black with eyes that were empty holes, clothes the same color as their skin. Their hands were locked together and they moved in perfect sync. Their bodies rippled and wavered, like the surface of a pond after a stone had been dropped into it and, as they came closer, Kili could see they were soaking wet. 

They left watery footprints and a trail of liquid on the stairs at they descended.

The boy was slightly taller, voice high and clear. “Mommy? Where have you been?” 

Between one second and the next Connie flashed away from them and too the stairs, a shocked gasp dropping from her lips. 

The children tilted their heads together and the girl spoke, words a delighted whisper. “You’ve come home to us mommy.” 

Water poured down the stairs from the top level, rushed over Connie’s feet and began to puddle around her. She opened her mouth but no sound came out; terror was plain on her face. The children took another step and were in front of their mother, tiny little things dressed in their sunday best suit and tie and frilly dress with ribbons in her hair. Connie’s eyes were round and huge in her face and her entire body was shaking. 

They lunged at her with animal swiftness but, at the same time, childlike sweetness, wrapping her around her waist and legs in a tight hug. “You’ll never leave us again.” They said together, little faces pressed against her dress and hands clinging to her. 

Connie threw her head back and screamed. 

What happened next was hard to put into words. The ground seemed to open up beneath the spirits, become a dark watery pit, and all three began to sink into it as a thousand voices rose up in a ear splitting wail, with only Connie’s horrified screams being heard above them. All the water than had come rushing down from the top floor flowed into the hole around them, sucked in by some invisible force. Deeper and deeper they sank, water rising to Connie’s knees then thighs, covering the children’s heads, her chest, shoulders, and then they were gone. The puddle rippled once then smoothed out, seemingly solid wood once more with no sign anything at all had happened. 

Not a trace of water was left. 

Fili looked over at Kili. Kili stared back then, in silent agreement, pushed against the dresser at the same time as his brother, freeing them. It went easy without a ghostly force holding it and in short order they were crouched around where the spirits had disappeared, Fili tapping the toe of his boots against the wood skeptically. 

“Well.” His brother said finally. “...I guess that’s it?” 

Kili rubbed a hand over his heart absently, the phantom feeling of fingers still there. “Explains why she said she couldn’t go home again. She was afraid to face them after what she'd done.” 

Fili nodded then, with one last look at the ground, turned back to the impala. And sighed. “My car.” 

The car.

Kili followed his brother over to the car that had been like a home to them most of their lives, cringing a little at the cracked windshield and shattered window. Aside from that it seemed fine, save a few scratches. The benefits of driving a monster of a vehicle at work, it seemed. In spite of what looked like good news to Kili his brother looked devastated, touching the hood with a hesitant kind of reverence. 

“...you doing okay there?”

“You drove my baby through a house, Kee. You drove it through a house.”

Kili wrinkled his nose. Right. That. “Well. You shot out the window.” 

“To save you. Completely different.” Fili shot him a flat look that dared him to argue. So, of course, he did. 

“Whatever, you shot a ghost with normal bullets. What were you thinking?” 

Fili’s sneered. “I was thinking you had Casper getting all homicidal in your lap so I had to do whatever it took to...wait. She was going to kill you.” 

Kili leaned against the hood of the car, ignoring his brother’s outraged look. “Yes, Fili, we established that.”

“She was going to kill you.” Fili repeated, brows furrowing. “A Lady in White, the spirit who only kills unfaithful men, had her hand full on phased into your chest and was going to kill you.”

Kili blinked. Fili didn’t. He looked down at his hands, already curled into tight balls at his sides. “She must have had her wires crossed. I mean, she wasn’t going to kill you and I know for a fact you’ve slept your way up and down both coasts.” 

“That is...hmm. The point is, I’ve never been unfaithful.” Fili said, tone saying that Kili should have known that already. “Can’t be a cheater if you’ve never been in a relationship Kili, and I am not relationship material. I'm pretty sure I've told you that before.” 

Kili stared at his hands harder, willing the moment to end. He got his wish when Fili snorted and slapped him on the chest, right over the heart. Kili hissed through his teeth and shoved his brother away as hard as he could, which wasn’t all that hard considering the way moving made his chest throb. 

He laughed as he moved away from Kili to begin picking his way over the debris to get to the other side of the car. Kili noted that he was limping just a little and not quite putting all his weight down on *that* leg. Did it bother him, Kili wondered but knew he’d never ask. “Get in. I stole a cop car to get here so we need to get a move on before every uniform in the state finds us.” 

“...you stole a cop car. After breaking out of jail.” 

“Get in the car, Kili, before you pass out.”  

He got in the car. Fili had them dug out and on the road, broken window covered by some handy tarp he’s taped over it and broken windshield deemed a lost cause for the moment, faster than Kili would have expected possible. Then again if there was nothing else they were good at it was leaving the scene of a crime or accident as quickly as humanly possible. 

They didn’t speak for a while, Kili contenting himself was sitting back and waiting for the painkillers he’d taken to kick in. They did, sort of. They weren’t strong enough to completely take away the pain, Fili would never carry anything that might dull his mind even a little, but they took the edge off enough to make it nothing more than a persistent ache every time he breathed. What it represented was worse than the pain. 

He watched his brother through lowered lashes, tracing the profile he knew better than his own, saving every little change to memory. His nose was a little more crooked than Kili remembered, which was saying something because he’d personally set it a handful of times growing up. There were silver piercings all down the shell of his ear. He used his tongue to prod at the scar running through his lip a lot. His hair had started to escape the bun and, though it didn’t curl like it did when it was shorter, it was a little wavy and clung to the side of his jaw. There were a couple of braids woven in and hidden in the ponytail and when the light hit him just right Kili thought he might have seen rounded bits of metal tucked away as well. 

He forced himself to close his eyes. “So what now?” Fili hummed questioningly. “With Uncle. We know where he is so do we-”

“You’re going back to school, I’m going to Washington.” Fili interrupted. “I asked you to help me find him, we found him. That’s it for you, like you wanted.”

Kili nodded. “Right.” 

What he’d wanted.

\---

His apartment building loomed before him, tall and forbidding against steadily brightening sky. At this point Kili would be lucky to get three or four hours of sleep before he had to wake up for his interview, assuming he’d get any at all. He was half out of the car, bag handles clenched in his hand, hesitating to take the final step. Fili was quiet, staring out at the empty street, waiting. 

Kili swallowed then offered, quietly: “Maybe? After my interview I can...I have some free time. A few weeks, maybe. I could help you out. We could-”

“Yeah, maybe.” Fili interrupted. The leather of the seat squeaked as his brother moved, turning to look at him. “Call me when you’re done, maybe I’ll still be around.” 

“You could come in and...rest? You have to be just as tired as I am.” 

Fili smiled with far too many teeth, more of a grimace and peeling back of lips than any actual show of feeling. “Come up there? Maybe have breakfast with your girl while you’re gone, swap stories about you?”

“Fee.”

“Not sure what I’d say, once you take out the monsters, the dead mom and overbearing uncle, and that  _ other _ thing-”

“Fili!”

His brother sighed, shoulders curving in and head falling forward to rest against the wheel. He looked...tired. “She seems nice, Kili, really. Be good to her. ...consider this brotherly advice.” 

Kili shut his mouth with an audible clicking of teeth and, stomach rolling with guilt and shame and anger and a dozen other things that tasted of sour bile in the back of his throat, nodded once before finally getting out of the car. He shut the door behind him and, without looking back, hurried into the apartment. The roar of the impala was growing distant before the door was even fully shut behind him. 

Legolas was on the couch and Kili grunted a greeting but didn’t stay to get one back. The shower was running, muffled strains of Tauriel’s favorite band drifting past the shut door, and the bedroom was empty; Kili collapsed on the bed face down, eyes shut before he hit the surface, then rolled over onto his back, mind already set on what he knew was the only real source of action.  

They could talk when she got out of the shower, sort everything out. He would be honest with her, about everything. That was...she deserved to know, deserved better than his lies and to have a chance to decide what she wanted after hearing the whole story.   

Something warm dripped onto his forehead. He reached for it reflexively, felt it smear across his skin. Another drop hit the back of his hand. 

Kili blinked open his eyes to stare up at the ceiling and into familiar hazel, blown wide with pain and covered in a milky sheen. Tauriel opened her mouth. Kili watched, paralyzed. 

Flames exploded into existence, bursting out in white hot streams from her body to cover the ceiling.  

\---

Fili made it about three blocks before the leaden feeling in the pit of his stomach made him slam on the breaks and whip the car into a u-turn. Most of his life he’d gotten these ‘gut feelings’ when shit was about to really hit the fan, with a worrying amount of accuracy. He’d never told anyone, afraid it would end up related to something weird or fucked up, but for the most part he tried to follow them. The feeling had told him something wasn’t right about Thorin’s disappearance and had driven him to seek out his brother for help. 

But this time he’d tried to ignore it, he really had, not wanting to make things worse or drag Kili deeper into anything. Leaving was the right thing to do and making it as clean a break as possible was the best way to handle it. No loose ends to worry over every night, no confusion or uncertainty. 

They would both knew where they were standing for the first time in years. 

But the feeling wouldn't be ignored, just got heavier, came with a tightness in his lungs and throat and a creeping prickle of dread that settled in his spine. 

Go back, the feeling seemed to be saying, go back or lose everything. 

A less kind part of Fili wanted to know what else there was to lose but the rest of him already knew. 

So he turned around, pushed the gas to the floor and pulled back in front of his brother’s apartment just in time to see the window he knew went to Kili’s bedroom burst outwards and flames pour out to lick at the outside wall. There was no thinking as he jumped from the barely stopped car and ran into the building. The door went down with a hard kick and the stairs flew under his feet so fast he was almost surprised when he was outside of Kili’s door. Another kick and he was in the apartment and swallowed up by a plume of smoke. The first hadn’t spread yet but Fili knew it would, fast. 

He almost ignored the blond on the couch because _KiliKiliKili_ but at the last moment he spared his brother’s friend a look. Then dismissed him; his neck was bent at a sickening angle and blood was crusted under his nose and at his ears. 

He went straight for Kili’s bedroom. The door was open and Kili was there, on the bed, eyes trained up above, mouth open and slack. The fire was everywhere, the walls, the furniture, jumping from surface to surface and somehow managing to catch everything like it was all made of dry grass. Everything but the bed; that the flames stayed away from, dancing around it in a loose semi-circle. Fili followed Kili's gaze up, felt nothing at all at the sight of Kili’s girlfriend pinned to the ceiling, flames blackening her skin, devouring her clothing and hair, or at the deep bloody gash in her belly, and went for his brother. 

Whatever shock had Kili just watching broke as soon as Fili’s grabbed him and started hauling him to the door. His brother went from mute, lifeless doll to fighting him with all the power in his overly tall (seriously, where had Kili even gotten the genes to be so fucking big and why had they skipped Fili so completely?) body. But he was sloppy, too focused on the woman whose name he was shouting than on stopping Fili from pushing him out, and there was no possible way he could ever match Fili’s desire to keep him alive or the strength that came from it. 

The flames roared as they finally consumed the bed.

Fili thought, absurdly, that it sounded like it was laughing at them. 


	5. Chapter 5

She, in so far as she was a she when like this, watched from afar as her vessel burned and her charge, crying and begging as he beat weakly at his brother’s body, was forced away from the life they’d built together. Her wings, taller than the apartment building they’d settled in, brighter than the demonic flames eating everything of her human existence, rustled uneasily. She hated to see him hurting. 

She hadn’t expected to feel anything once she shed her vessel, at least not in the same way she had these past few years, but feel she did. It was a hollow space somewhere, like a chunk of her true form had been carved away.  

Legolas stirred next to her, disapproval written on what passed for a face with their kind. “Tauriel-”

“He’s so upset.” She wasn’t surprised but in the same moment she was. She’d imagined...she’d hoped it would be easier for him, with his brother returned to him. She’d hoped that would blunt the pain but she could tell now that it didn’t. 

It hadn’t been meant to be like this. Everything they’d known about Kili, from watching over him, had said his interest ran towards male bodies, blond, with personalities that veered towards blunt and arrogant. Legolas was supposed to be the one who helped mend Kili’s heart and Tauriel was to be the friend and nothing more, but humans were...surprising, always. 

“He wasn’t yours.” He scolded her even as one of his wings, larger than hers and more numerous in number, folded around her warmly. It was more than she deserved. She was just a guardian, even if her charge had been a very important one, and he a seraph, the son of an archangel, above mourning the loss of a silly, fleeting human relationship built on a deception and watered with lies, from both sides. 

Kili hadn’t been hers. Couldn’t be. But-

“He was.” 

Legolas’ light dimmed a touch. “He was.” A pause. “It could be worse. I had to let that demon snap my neck. Shameful. I’ll never live it down.” She didn’t laugh, because they couldn’t laugh or smile or cry, but when her wings shook they made a soft chiming noise, like small bells. His wing curled a little closer around her. “Come Tauriel. It’s time to go home.” 

She hesitated only long enough to drop the runestone Kili had left with her safely in his bag (it took only a flex of her body and a touch of grace pushed back into the human plane) before turning away from the human world and spreading her wings. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not really into killing people for man pain, but I don't mind pretend killing people only for them to turn out to be angelic manipulators for man pain. And Tauriel is a very angelic sounding name, no?
> 
> But that's it, the end of...uh, idk, Arc One? Which is to say I had fun with this and will absolutely be continuing it, once I decide what episode to do next (The bigfoot/wendigo episode has always bored me sooooo we'll see). Thank you for reading, please don't hesitate to comment and let me know what you thought of everything.
> 
> The End


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